


Doctor Who Drabbles/Ficlets/Meta/Miscellany

by gallifreyburning



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 15:24:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 40
Words: 27,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17266664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallifreyburning/pseuds/gallifreyburning
Summary: Backing up a bunch of random stuff from tumblr, mostly short and/or unfinished things. The vast majority are Ten/Rose or TenToo/Rose.





	1. Soul Mates AU

Everyone has a book inside them. It’s compulsory, to let it out – a biological urge that takes over when someone turns sixteen, an intellectually and hormonally-driven part of puberty where each teenager locks themselves away in a room for a month and writes like they’re possessed. The books are a glimpse into their soul. No two are alike, each is a unique mirror reflecting the author’s personality. 

But the book is always unfinished – half of a whole, beginning or ending abruptly, often mid-sentence, because each human is only capable of writing half a story.

In the old days, people used to put those half-finished books on shelves in closets, or maybe in a local public library if they were lucky. But the dawn of information-sharing technology means that the books are uploaded to massive content clearinghouses, on display for all to access. 

And not just for the sake of freedom of information – but because when you find the other half of your story, you’ve found your soul mate. 

The Doctor is the head of the EU’s Story Database Department, in charge of creating complicated algorithms and maintaining massive computer databanks with the sole purposes of finding and matching stories. He personally wrote the program that automatically generates an email to each author, when he identifies the happy couple. 

His own half-written story is tucked away on a shelf in his office, never uploaded to the database. Why would he? It’s a myth, of course, that “happy” part of “happy ending”. Some peoples’ soul mates are terrible monsters, and they would be better off leaving that story of theirs uncompleted. Some peoples’ soul mates bring tragedy and pain into their lives. After years in this job, he reckons the train wrecks are more common than the happily-ever-afters.

One day, when the Doctor is out traveling, his assistant Donna comes across the Doctor’s half-written story and uploads it. 

The pingback is almost instant – a woman in London, Rose Tyler. 

The Doctor is livid, when he gets the automatically generated email that afternoon – the email and the attachment, Rose Tyler’s half of their story. 

It’s too late, because Rose Tyler has gotten an email, too. 

The Doctor doesn’t read Rose Tyler’s half of the book. He definitely doesn’t contact her. Donna asks him about it once or twice, teasing at first, then over lunch one workday with the solemnity of a concerned friend. He tells her to drop it, and she does. 

Weeks go by, then months, and the Doctor begins to find it difficult to concentrate at work. He’s increasingly,  _distractedly_  indignant about the fact that Rose Tyler hasn’t contacted him, either. 

Honestly, why  _wouldn’t_ she contact him? Surely she read his half of their story: his excellent diction, his superb grammar, his thrilling storytelling would impress anyone! Surely she looked him up, after she got that email – his picture is on the official website for the EU Story Database Department, along with a very splendid summary of his CV. He travels to exotic places, he meets interesting people and changes their lives for the better! What’s  _not_  to be impressed about?!

One day, in the small hours before dawn, the sleepless Doctor wanders his cluttered apartment, restless for a reason he can’t name. He eats a half-dozen cupcakes left over from a birthday celebration at work, he watches crap telly, and finally -  _finally_  - he pulls up the email with Rose Tyler’s half of their story attached. 

He opens the file. 

As the sun rises, pale and thin through the London clouds, he reads.  

He reads, and he understands why Rose Tyler hasn’t contacted him.


	2. Mail Order Bride AU

I spent a lot of time thinking about how Rose would feel, after two weeks on a steamer across the Atlantic and a week long train journey from New York to West Texas. I thought about the dry heat swallowing her up when she stepped off the train, and how she’d have worked up a sweat from nerves before then anyway. She’d have rehearsed what she was going to say to her new husband. 

But he wasn’t there. Everyone hustled off the tiny train platform in this pathetic excuse of a town — there were only four buildings. Four! And Rose was left alone, standing on the wooden planks as the train pulled away. 

Rose was humiliated, but she couldn’t turn around yet, because she’d come this far. And she wouldn’t go home before she gave this horrible man a piece of her mind, for luring her out here and then leaving her alone at the train station. She had to beg a ride on a chuck wagon heading in the right direction to get to Mickey Smith’s ranch, and even then she ended up walking the last mile and carrying her trunk.

She’s filthy and sweaty, her hair trailing down from a once-immaculate bun. Her pink dress is brown from the ground up, coated in dust. 

And there he is, the man himself, brazen as day in front of his ranch house, like he hadn’t just missed the most important appointment of his life. The house a small structure with a flat roof, flanked by a few other buildings — barn, kitchen, and outhouse, she supposes. But she’s focused on the lanky man at the horse trough, the sweat-soaked bastard pouring water over his own head to cool off in the heat. 

The look on his face when he sees her is priceless. The way his eyes go so wide, she can see white all the way around his brown irises. The way his mouth falls open in a perfect circle of astonishment. And when she starts yelling at him, his astonishment morphs into confusion: how  _dare_ he humiliate her like this, she’s a respectable woman, and just because he courted her by mail doesn’t mean she’s an easy  _anything_. She likes a bit of adventure, she does, but this is beyond the pale. Mickey Smith is a despicable cad and she hopes his cattle trample right over him!

“Mickey Smith?"the lanky man asks, confusion radiating off of him just like the heat radiating from the stone-hard ground under the soles of her shoes. "Mickey Smith, he — he died. He owned this place before me. I’m not Mickey.”

It’s Rose’s turn, with the wide eyes and the mouth hanging open. 

“I’m sorry for your loss,” the skinny man says. He has a London accent. Out here, in the wilds of America, a man with a London accent. How unlikely. How  _impossible_.

“I didn’t really know him,” Rose replies automatically. “We exchanged a few letters, he promised me a respectable marriage and a good home.”

“You fancied a bit of adventure,” not-Mickey supplies helpfully. He’s got a hat in one hand, and he puts it on, covering up the wild thatch of brown spikes atop his head. It’s a ridiculous hat, made of straw, more suited to a seaside vacation than a ranch. “So you hopped on a steamship.”

“A rancher’s wife or a life working in a factory.”

“I’m sorry you’ve come all this way.” He pauses. “I’m the Doctor, by the way.”

“I’m Rose Tyler,” she replies automatically. “You’re a doctor?”

“Well, people call me the Doctor. I picked up the nickname during the Mexican-American War. It stuck.”

“I think I broke my finger, carrying this trunk from the train station.” Rose kicks the offending luggage with her tattered shoes. 

The Doctor edges nearer, his posture making it clear that he’s not sure how close to get. Like she’s a mirage he’s dreamed up in the heat and she’ll disappear like a trick of the light, or maybe she’s a feral creature that will go wild at the slightest touch. 

Rose sticks out her left hand. Her fingers are coated in dirt, a bit like they used to look when she’d been selling coal on a London streetcorner, but brown instead of black. 

It’s a new kind of dirt, a new kind of life out here. No coal to burn in this corner of the world, Rose would wager, just dead, dry wood from the stubby local trees.

The Doctor takes her hand in his own, his skin wet and cool from the water in the trough. He inspects her fingers carefully.

“They don’t look broken, just scuffed up. Would you” — he glances at her trunk, then at her face — “would you like to come inside? There isn’t another train out of the station until tomorrow. I can give you a ride back tonight, if you’d like. Or tomorrow.” He stops, a few stuttering syllables coming out as he realizes the implications of what he’s just said. “I mean, you can — I’ll — I can sleep in the barn, there’s plenty of hay, I’ll be cozy in there. You can have the house, until tomorrow. If you don’t want to go back to the station tonight.”

“I didn’t see a hotel in town,” Rose says. She hopes there’s enough dirt on her cheeks to hide how red they’ve become. 

“No, they’re building one, but it isn’t finished yet. Just the post office, the general store, and the saloon right now. There are some rooms in the saloon, Madame Baker only rents them out by the hour for her special kind of” — he coughs, and simultaneously mutters a word that sounds like “customers." 

Oh.

 _Oh_.

"I certainly won’t be staying with Madame Baker,” Rose huffs, plucking her hand from his grip. She looks past him, to the long low building in the center of the ranch. “Bring my trunk." 

She sets off toward the Doctor’s house. A few minutes later, she hears the sound of the trunk being dragged across the rocky dry ground after her. 

For the first time in days, Rose Tyler smiles. 


	3. You Were All I Could Think About Today

The Doctor writes the first note two days after he burned up a sun, one day after Donna turned him down. He’s standing alone in his console room, and there’s no one to chatter at, no distraction, nothing. His ship thrums around him, familiar and eternal. 

Saying it aloud would mean he’d gone starkers, wouldn’t it? Talking to himself. He isn’t ready to hear his own voice echo emptily back at him, evidence of exactly how bleak things are. 

The blank stack of sticky-notes is in a hidden compartment on the console, kept handy for the times he needs to attach a reminder to the display panel. Intergalactic coordinates, grocery lists, indexes of his favorite words, reminders about where he’s hidden his secret stash of biscuits so Rose won’t find them.

If this isn’t something he can say aloud, it seems at least something he should make note of. The Doctor pulls out a little square stack of yellow paper and writes the words in English (not Gallifreyan, maybe because he’s on auto-pilot, maybe because he thinks she’ll be back one day to read it).

Trainers making quiet noises on the grating, he navigates the halls of his TARDIS, and this path has been walked so many times there might as well be a groove worn into the floor. It’s gravity that takes him here, the way he’s come so many times before. Except this time the pull isn’t quite as strong, his stride is slower, because she isn’t waiting inside anymore.

He stops a distance from her bedroom door, staring at the warm bronze-colored metal. The note flutters in his hand as his fingers tap absently against the sticky bit on the top of the paper.  

_I’ll move on_ , he tells himself.  _I always do. Same old life._  

With the reverence of someone approaching a shrine, he steps close enough to affix the note to the door. He doesn’t go inside – he doesn’t want to see it, her trainers under the bed, makeup table cluttered with tubes and bottles, the scent of her everywhere – but he rubs his finger across the place where the note sticks, making sure it’s secure. 

He walks away and doesn’t look back. 

It’s something his later companions – Martha, and then Donna – don’t understand, and even tease him about, his periodic stops at office supply stores in the past and the future, everywhere from Hallax IV to Surrey. The way he stands in the paper goods aisle and compares the adhesives on various brands, until he finds one with a chemical composition most compatible with the metal inside the TARDIS. 

“I’ve only ever seen you use a handful of those, Spaceman,” Donna says, snatching the bag full of yellow sticky-notes away from him as they walk out the shop door into the green sunlight of an alien world. The Doctor stops, turns his face toward the star, and takes a deep breath. “I’m beginning to think the TARDIS actually powered by Post-Its instead of alien fuel or magic or” – she waves her hand – “whatever.”

He opens his eyes, turns to look at her, and smiles a little. “I knew you’d figure it out one day, Donna. Brilliant, you are! The TARDIS is, in fact, powered by Post-Its. At least for now. Someday she might not need them anymore – she’ll gobble up interstellar dust and rift energy and that will be enough – but for now, everything’s running on little bits of yellow paper.”

She puts her arm through his. “Now tell me more about this planet with the market on it – they have Post-Its there, do they?”

“Oh, Shan Shen’s markets are  _legendary_ ," the Doctor replies, his eyes sparkling. _”_ You’re going to  _love_  this.“


	4. Sub Nomine

They never make it official between them. Never say the words – at the time, Rose thought what they were forging was above all that, although much later, after he was gone and her grief began to fade into a hollow sort of sorrow, the word  _cowardice_ throbbed in the secret corners of her heart.

No matter the words both of them swallow, Rose knows he respects her. She walks in the front door of TARDIS Enterprises, Inc. as an outside legal consultant, and by the end of her first day he asks her to come aboard full-time as General Counsel. Her blunt refusal doesn’t deter him; he asks again the next day, with an offhand shrug, as though he doesn’t think the universe turns on the answer.

But it does.

Everything pivots on one syllable, one simple  _yes_. Her entire life shifts, rearranges itself in relation to that big blue glass skyscraper in downtown London, and the man who serves as CEO.

He hardly looks the part – close-cropped dark hair, more military than businessman; leather jacket and jumper, more sea captain than corporate mogul. His face is a jumble of features greater than the sum of their parts, big ears and nose, and blue eyes so sharp they could pop another man’s ego at thirty paces. His demeanor is a heady mix of stoic nobility and capricious humor that sends her head spinning, her heart following right after.

Her business cards read “Rose Tyler, Executive General Counsel.”

When they are alone in the boardroom, working into the long hours of the night after everyone else has gone home, he grins and calls her his Executive General Conscience.

He holds her hand, shares his thoughts, and on a handful of occasions bares his soul. But they never speak of the ever-strengthening bond between them, never put words to it, never even make it past the first kiss.

When it happens, the people at the hospital say something about taking too much on, burning himself out, stress and overwork and meaningless explanations that fade to a dull, grief-filled buzz in Rose’s ears. Besides Rose, he was alone – there was no one else – so she sees to the funeral arrangements. She mourns over his grave, and tries her best to step into his shoes at TARDIS Enterprises, tries to keep things running the way he would have.

Rose knows she’s good – after the last year, she’s certain she could step into the boardroom at any other company and hold her own. But there’s something different about TARDIS, something nearly otherworldly in the way it operates, something that Rose can’t quite lay hold of by herself. Something, quite frankly, she doesn’t  _want_  to lay hold of by herself.

As weighty a burden as it is, the idea of walking away is more than she can bear. Because the work she does here gives meaning to everything else.

There is a will, and a brother he had never mentioned before. The company has always been in the family, and the TARDIS legal team sets about trying to locate this missing man, but it’s like sending message into a void. He doesn’t respond.

Four months later, smack in the middle of a tense, last-ditch round of negotiations with Sycorax Manufacturing, the wayward CEO-to-be struts through the blue conference room doors like he belongs there. For a wild moment, Rose doesn’t know who he is. She’s already reaching for the phone to call security and have this pinstriped peacock thrown out of the building, when he opens his gob and she freezes.

“In spite of the prevailing public perception to the contrary, there  _are_ child labor laws on that little island in the Pacific where Sycorax Manufacturing bases its production operations,” he says, the words coming out rapid-fire. Plopping into the vacant CEO’s chair at the conference table, he swivels toward the Sycorax CFO. “It’s clever what you’ve done, exploiting the local cultural beliefs about blood oaths, brainwashing families into surrendering their children to your production facilities to work the assembly lines. Their little fingers are good for operating the delicate equipment, I know. It’s been years since I saw anyone try to pull something so brazen.” The expensive leather office chair creaks as he leans forward, propping his elbows onto the table and steepling his fingers in front of himself. He fixes the Sycorax CFO with a cold, level stare, brown eyes instead of the blue ones Rose knew so well, but laden with the same focus and intensity. “But it’s not something I’ll allow.”

“How dare you!” the Sycorax CFO sputters, leaping from his chair. His sallow face begins to pink, his hands clenched into fists. “We came here to re-negotiate our contract in good faith, and you storm in with baseless accusations, intent on provoking some sort of conflict!” He shifts his gaze to Rose. “I demand you have this …  _person_  … escorted off-property before I’ll even consider releasing TARDIS from our agreement!”

“You’ve taken advantage of TARDIS when it was vulnerable. You’ve exploited people I care about. You’ve made some – quite frankly –  _hideous_  fashion decisions.” The pinstriped man surveys the CFO’s crimson suit, attention lingering on the white lapels and skull-embroidered tie. He wrinkles his nose and shakes his head. “Anyway, where was I? That’s right: Miss Tyler won’t call anyone to escort me out of the building, because this building belongs to me. Doesn’t it, Miss Tyler?”

Rose twitches in surprise as everyone in the room turns to stare at her. She’s been working as de facto president of TARDIS for the last four months, and it’s up to her to pass the baton back into the proper hands. They’re mid-race, and her relay partner has apparently switched out without warning.

This bloke is certainly behaving like he knows what to do with the baton, if she chooses to slip it into those skinny fingers of his, skinny as the rest of him. A scrawny bloke with a chestnut scrub-brush of hair atop his head, sitting here like he’s always belonged at this conference table – at the very  _heart_  of TARDIS Enterprises.

There’s confidence in every line of his bearing, except his unguarded brown eyes. The plea she reads there is a dead giveaway of how much he needs her approval. Without her support, the rest of the TARDIS executive board will walk right out on this stranger, file through that door without a look back.

Of course, the sputtering uncertainty on the Sycrorax CFO’s face is the most welcome sight Rose has seen in … well, in four months, come to think of it.

“No security guard who values their job would try to eject a CEO from his own company, Doctor,” Rose says. A soft sigh fills the room as the TARDIS board releases its collectively held breath, a rush of air from the crowd as the baton falls into this stranger’s hand and he takes off across the track.

 _Doctor_. It’s a ridiculous surname, but when Rose had scoffed, the man who previously carried the moniker told her it was just the same as anyone named Miller or Smith. A title put to a family and their line of work, so ingrained into their very being it becomes their identity. And that’s exactly what the CEO of TARDIS Enterprises is: healer, fixer, sometimes snake-oil salesman, depending on the circumstances.

The man across the table holds Rose’s gaze a beat longer than is necessary, his grin softening from blusteringly cocky to pleased and grateful, just for her. One eyebrow lifting, he swivels back toward the Sycorax CFO.

“There we are, then. I hereby declare TARDIS’s contract with Sycorax Manufacturing null and void, due to term violations and breaches in good faith on your part. There will be no further negotiations. And  your litigation department should brace themselves for subpoenas from several international regulatory agencies about those labor practices.”

An hour hours after the Sycorax team has been escorted off-property and the TARDIS board has dispersed back into the daily melee of running an international corporation, Rose stands in front of the CEO’s office door. The mahogany, stained deep gold, has never been closed to her before; it was always open, and on those rare occasions when it was closed she was on the other side, with  _him_.

Now there’s a new Doctor inside this office, and Rose is on the wrong side of the door.

Her intestines feel like they’re strangling her stomach. The sour wad of grief in her throat that had slowly begun to dissolve over the course of the past few months has swelled into existence again, filling her mouth with bile every time she tries to swallow. When she knocks, soft and tentative, she wrestles with the memory of a man with short dark hair and big ears waiting at the desk inside.

“Come in!”

Strange voice, strange bloke, no big goofy grin to greet her. Rose slips inside the office, and draws up short. Cold washes across her skin, raising goosebumps. No one has touched this office since the previous Doctor’s death – his copy of Milton still sitting beside the plush armchair off to one side, little tool box atop his desk (he always said his brain worked best when he was tinkering), his crimson tea mug (always unwashed until he used it the next time).

Now, cardboard boxes are stacked and scattered across the plush carpet. Atop one, a leather jacket is folded alongside a pile of books. Rose walks over to pick up the coat without thought, salvaging it from the rubbish heap.

“Thought it was time for a bit of reorganization,” the new Doctor says from behind the desk. He peers at her through a pair of square-framed glasses as he rises to his feet. “I suppose we ought to be formally introduced.”

“You’re the Doctor, CEO of TARDIS Enterprises,” Rose says, forcing herself to look at him. Her fingers tug at the leather lapels of the coat draped over her arm. The coat feels so heavy, it might just pull her through the floor of this office.

“And you’re Rose Tyler, lawyer-in-chief extraordinaire,” the Doctor replies brightly, grinning. Pulling off his specs, he tucks them into his pocket.

He’s younger than his brother, but by how much she can’t tell. It’s not bad, that grin.  _He’s_  not bad, in a pretty boy way; he’s the sort Rose would’ve accepted a drink from, before she met the other Doctor. He bears no resemblance whatsoever to his brother in physical appearance – Rose briefly wonders if one of them might have been adopted. Not that it matters; this man is the heir to the company. She didn’t need HR to verify the fact, after the Sycorax matter was seen to, but they did anyway.

“My condolences,” she says.

It seems to take a moment for the meaning to register, as though he had forgotten his brother was dead. And once it registers, his eye contact breaks and he turns his head, features almost hyper-animated in an attempt to deflect Rose’s sympathy, or his own feelings, she’s not sure. “Well-l-l-l, everything has its time, eventually. Just a natural part of living.” He draws a breath. “You must have been close. My condolences to you, as well.”

Rose has no idea what to say. “Thank you.”

“It’s obvious you're immeasurably important to this company. That you were immeasurably important to him. Were you two–” His left eyebrow arches to a ridiculous height as he lets the sentence finish itself.

“We were colleagues.” The words are sharp, brusque. “We were friends.” She folds her arms, holding the leather against her stomach like armor. “Seeing as how there aren’t any HR lackeys around to kick up a fuss at either one of us, I’ll ask a rude question in return for yours: where have you been? We’ve been trying to contact you for months.”

“Fieldwork,” the Doctor says, snagging a stack of photos off the desk and coming around to present them for her examination. She takes them from his hand and flips through them – grainy color shots of a factory, of children standing at large machines, of an impoverished rural village. “It’s my specialty. Been in the field since I left school – research, clandestine investigations, helping people where I can, that sort of thing. All of it comes back to TARDIS. Always has. I was in the middle of the Sycorax investigation when I got your messages. Naturally, I had to finish what I’d started before I came back.”

“You could’ve sent word, at least. To let us know.” Rose is pushing, goading, just like she would’ve with the previous Doctor in this office. He’d have grinned and pushed right back, but Rose doesn’t know what to expect from this new man. It’s a bit like shoving a pointy stick at an alien creature, waiting to see whether its hackles go up or it starts to purr.

“If I broke cover, it would’ve endangered the people I was helping.”

The way he says it, she feels the truth in the words, and also the weight of something else underneath them. Another truth, buried deeper – he was avoiding TARDIS? Avoiding responsibility? Avoiding the reality of his brother’s death, maybe?

Rose says, “I see.”

“Do you?”

The Doctor lifts a hand to scrub at a spot on the back of his neck, arm akimbo, and it seems to genuinely matter to him whether Rose believes his story. The open appeal in his eyes, hopeful for her approval, just like at the conference table earlier. Except now he isn’t trying to impress an executive board or anyone from Sycorax Manufacturing. Now it’s just Rose, just the two of them, and the quiet, familiar hum of the air conditioner in the background.

“Yeah.”

In a sudden movement, he rocks back on his heels and claps his hands together, rubbing his palms. His smile is infectious; Rose doesn’t realize she’s reflecting the expression to him until her cheeks start to ache.

It’s been a while since she did that – smiled. At  _anyone_.

“Brilliant! I’ve ordered us fish and chips for dinner, ought to be delivered anytime now. I’m up to speed on all the company files –”

“All of them?” Rose interrupts in surprise. “HR files, cases, contracts, everything?”

“Down to the memo Lance Williams in janitorial sent to his supervisor complaining about the switch from two-ply to one-ply. I’m a quick study,” he replies with a shrug. “But I do have some questions for you. That is, if you don’t have anywhere else to be this evening.”

An empty flat, a microwave dinner, and a DVR full of reality programming.

“I might be able to cancel my other plans. If you need me.”

“I need you,” he replies, and for the space of those three syllables, all his quivering energy settles into a deep well of certainty, calm and still. He holds out one hand, bringing it toward her with slow purpose, as though he’s approaching a wild creature that might bolt.

She realizes he’s asking for the leather jacket still clutched against her stomach.

Running her hand across its well-worn surface, she takes a shallow breath, her shoulders tightening, and relinquishes it to him.

When she first walked into the room and saw the leather discarded in a box along with some books, as though ready for the rubbish bin, she had been defensive. Angry. But watching this Doctor handle his predecessor’s coat with reverent care, the meticulous way he folds the sleeves and smooths the lapels before gently placing it in the box, delicate and precise as he places the lid on top – she realizes that she was wrong, these boxed things aren’t bound for the rubbish heap.

The Doctor straightens and turns to regard her, brown eyes glittering. “Shall we get started, Rose Tyler?”

There’s a twist in her stomach as she nods, a swirl of guilt and betrayal and the ache of someone lost, but she follows this Doctor to his desk anyway. 


	5. What Should A Man Do, But Be Merry?

The Doctor didn’t intend to be here.

Then again, he hasn’t intended to be in quite a few places lately. The TARDIS has been behaving like a tetchy carnival ride these past few months, spinning him around and spitting him out everywhere he doesn’t want to be, apparently hell-bent on thwarting his good pleasure. It’s as though the old girl feels like she has some right to rebuke him for ignoring the Oods.

First he ended up in a galaxy twelve megaparsecs from the Milky Way, where not a single creature had a concept of language. They interpreted the Doctor’s sneeze as a declaration of war, and he only negotiated a peace by a multi-planetary broadcast of himself singing “I Did It My Way.” They let him name the galaxy before he left. Then, he was aiming for the Effervescent Falls of Horrowood Cuspate when the TARDIS deposited him at the Phorphorous Carousel of the Great Magellan Gestadt, instead. And that entire incident with the Red Carnivorous Maw started with a trip to pick up strawberry biscuits.

After all of that, the Doctor didn’t intend to be here, but things could be worse.  A picnic with royalty – more specifically, a newly-minted queen who hasn’t taken her eyes off him for nearly a week. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth is far more appealing (and far more ginger) than an Ood, that’s certain.

 _Just Bess, Doctor. I think you’ve earned the right to address me by my Christian name when we’re in private,_ she’d insisted after they collaborated in ferreting out the Zygons in her retinue disguised as royal guards.

The pillows on their picnic blanket are comfortable, but the Doctor is resting his head on her highness’s lap. She’s been absently twisting his hair around her fingers, her conversation intelligent and engaging. A slow breeze tickles his skin, heavy with the scent of jasmine from the royal gardens. Shakespeare and Ophelia and country matters spin around and around in the Doctor’s thoughts.

Bess is only twenty-six, and she doesn’t hate him yet. The Doctor has been picking at the threads of time surrounding their connection, pulling apart stitches with delicate care. Nothing drastic, nothing like Bowie Base One, he learned his lesson there. This time, he’s toying with the idea that perhaps he can change this tiny outcome, so that an older and wiser Queen won’t chase him through the streets one day, screaming for his head.

After all, most events are in flux. The Great Carniverous Maw’s allergy to strawberry biscuits, the state of Good Queen Bess’s heart, the summons of an Ood, everything that isn’t fixed can be rewritten, if he tugs and cuts and weaves the threads carefully enough.

He squints up at Bess. Her conversation stops and she stares back at him, smile full of shyness he doesn’t expect, given he’s been using her thigh as a pillow for the last twenty-seven minutes.

“You haven’t listened to a word I’ve said, have you?” she teases, fingernails drawing across his scalp, pulling toward the crown of his head. His toes curl so hard his arches cramp.

“’Course I have,” he says. “You were saying something about … the French, wasn’t it?”

Her laugh is loud and genuine. “You  _weren’t_  listening, I knew it!”

“Well, you can hardly expect a man to concentrate on a day like today, with a blue sky and such brilliant company. Tell me about the French, then.” He takes her free hand, fingers sliding together, palms warm.

When it reaches them, the sound comes from nowhere and everywhere all at once – from the nearby woods, from the ground below, from the cloudless sky above. The buzz of insects ear-splittingly magnified, magma rumbling and churning miles beneath the Earth’s surface, blood throbbing through the Doctor’s hearts in eight-part rhythm. All of it combines, shifts, mutates into a noise that curdles his blood. Through his low-level psychic connection to the TARDIS, he knows that on the other side of London, the cloister bell is echoing through the empty corridors of his ship.

Terror pins the Doctor like an insect to the ground, half-sprawled across Queen Bess’s lap. His respiratory bypass kicks in. This sound is the harbinger of a terrible creature that will spring from the very air and consume him, starting with his soul.

_Is this it? Is this my death? Is it time?_

Bess prattles on. He’s been suspended in an infinite moment, starved for air. His every fiber aches for movement, to run, to escape as far and fast as his TARDIS will take him. The moment ends, and he stumbles to his feet in a flurry of pinstriped limbs, staggering off the blanket.

“Doctor?” Bess shades her eyes from the sun as she regards him with mild alarm. “Are you quite all right?”

“Are you deaf? Didn’t you hear that?” he asks sharply. She blinks, a frown marring her lovely features. Hardly the appropriate way to address a queen, but he hasn’t given up on being rude. It isn’t time for surrender yet.

Spinning around, he surveys the dark treeline of the nearby woods, looking for something amiss. Did they overlook a Zygon? Is another infiltrator at court? Is someone or something stalking them?

“Hear what?” Bess asks, clearly irritated. She dusts off her skirt and rises to her feet.

“It was … it was …” The Doctor makes a frustrated noise, waving his hands as though a gesture might encompass the profundity of the thing that still has his hackles up. “A bark – no, a snarl. Wait, wait, I’ve got it, a growl! It was a growl! A big cat, a lion, maybe? No, a dog!” He grins in spite of himself, clapping delightedly as the knowledge clicks into place. “A wolf! It was a growling wolf!”

“You’re hearing things, daft man. Wolves haven’t been spotted near London for a century,” Bess tuts, crossing her arms and rolling her eyes.

The Doctor’s moment of giddiness at his own cleverness has melted right back into cold fear. “A wolf.”

Then he sees it, the branches of the trees across the meadow, swaying in the wind, limbs undeniably bent to form two words from the living language of Matrochian. The shape of a shaggy lupine head in the single cloud drifting overhead. The soft sound of wind through the grass, split across thousands of leaves like water breaking over rocks, whistling and whispering and calling those same two words:  _BAD WOLF._

The growl still rumbles in the Doctor’s bones – his initial fear that the sound would materialize and consume him, starting with his soul, was completely unfounded. The deed is already done. Bad Wolf ate his soul years ago, on a satellite orbiting this little blue and green gemstone of a planet in this back-end of the galaxy. It blew down his house and gobbled him whole, and he has been lost ever since.

But being lost wasn’t so bad.

Better with two.

“Rose.” The word is dry in his throat. He chokes on it. She is lost to him – he surrendered her to his metacrisis self, gave her over to a fantastic life, for her own good. She’s safe. She’s happy.

She  _has_  to be.

He hears her, words scattered across the web of time,  _BAD WOLF_  and beneath that, so soft and determined it raises the hair on his arms, makes his hearts stutter in his chest,  _I made my choice a long time ago, and I’m never gonna leave you_.

Bess comes to his side and links her arm through his, her face pinched in concern. “I fear the heat has addled your brains. We ought to find some shade.”

“Rose,” he repeats, not sparing the queen a glance.

“There are roses everywhere, Doctor. My ladies in waiting embroider them on everything, the pillows and blankets and draperies and dresses.” Bess steps back with a small flourish, spreading her skirts to display the pattern. “I thought you’d never notice my dress, it’s high time you said something. Lovely, isn’t it?”

The queen is covered in intricately crafted Tudor roses, pink and yellow and white.  

Thick! He’s so thick, so slow to see – to really  _see_  – what’s been going on.

This hasn’t been about Bess at all. It never was.

It strikes the Doctor, finally that perhaps the Rose Tyler who is crackling into existence, who will inevitably descend upon him like a thunderclap – perhaps this Rose hasn’t been left on a beach in an alternate universe yet. Perhaps the Dimension Cannon is not only propelling her across the Void, but also propelling her forward and backward in time as she searching for his help in figuring out why all the stars have been disappearing in Pete’s universe.

Perhaps the Doctor’s been setting his sights low, in choosing which parts of the Web of Time to pick apart and restructure. Perhaps when Rose is standing in front of him this time, there won’t be anything to get in the way – Dalek, Davros, metacrisis, none of it. Everything will be different, except the way she looks at him and flings herself into his arms. Except the words,  _So I could come back_.

The Doctor and Rose Tyler, in the TARDIS. Donna, with her mind intact. Everything as it should be.

Bess is talking, her voice a low buzz in the Doctor’s ear. He absently gropes for her hand (these fingers are too slim, grip is too limp, not Rose’s hand), still hardly looking at her. Running on his own, he’d be faster; occasionally Bess has a hard time keeping up in all her bulky skirts. He ought to let her rummage through the TARDIS wardrobe, see if she finds some trousers she likes.

“Run!” the Doctor calls to her, dizzy at the infinite new possibilities stretching across the Web of Time, nerves churning through every blood vessel. He surges forward, away from the picnic and toward the TARDIS, dragging Bess along.


	6. Prompt Fic: Drink Me - Jack Harkness and Mickey Smith

Jack finds him alone in the TARDIS media room. He’s fiddling with a game controller, aiming it at the screen and pressing buttons apparently at random. 

“Want a hand with that?” Jack says, depositing his bottle of hypervodka on the coffee table and joining him on the couch.

“Can’t even figure out how to turn the thing on,” Mickey grouses, tossing the spare controller at him. 

It’s a Kii-Four Alpha Orange gaming console, rather outdated at that. Well, outdated as far as Jack’s concerned, although the TARDIS is currently parked somewhere near 1062 AD, so perhaps not outdated to the people living in the yurts on the plains outside. The Doctor and Rose are there now, feasting with the locals to celebrate the ousting of a malevolent local god that was actually an energy vampire from Betelgeuse.

Mickey and Jack were decidedly  _not_  invited, mostly owing to the fact that Jack inadvertently blew up the chieftan’s yurt, and Mickey happened to be standing beside Jack at the time.

In a matter of minutes, Jack has the game console up and running, Holo-Warrior’s Creed MXVII bursting to life across the screen in a flare of color and screech of theme music.

“Care for a little friendly wager?” Mickey says, nodding toward the hypervodka. “Lose a life force, take a shot?”

“But you’ve never played this game before. That would hardly be fair,” Jack laughs. 

“I’m a quick learner. What’s the matter, you afraid of a little competition?”

With a huff and an arched eyebrow, Jack plops down on the couch and hits the “start” button.

When the Doctor and Rose finally come back to the TARIDS hours later, they follow the sound of snoring to the media room. There’s an empty hypervodka bottle on the table, and Mickey sprawled atop Jack on the couch. He has a Sharpie clutched in his hand, and the word LOSER is written in unsteady letters across Jack’s forehead.


	7. Bakery AU

The food hall in the basement of Henrik’s department store isn’t the most exciting place to work, but it is certainly busy.  An entire floor full of gourmet groceries, fresh fruit and marzipan and chocolate-covered crickets, deli meat and lychee-flavored sodas, all arranged as artfully as the denizens of London could ever want.

It’s far more chaotic than the other floors, and the clerks don’t get commission, not like in the women’s department upstairs. Rose has been stranded as the salesgirl at the bakery counter for a month now, on her feet the entire day, filling orders for a stream of posh customers who complain if their croissant is too flaky, or not flaky enough, or sometimes both at the same time.

All that, and there’s stock boy named Mickey who asks Rose to come round to the pub after practically every shift, to watch a match and get a pint. She’d said yes a few days ago, and has been trying to figure out how to say no when he asks again.

The only perk is getting to take home a share of the leftover pastries and cakes at closing. Rose’s mum has commented more than once about the fact that Rose’s bum’s  _definitely_ gotten bigger, regardless of the fact that Jackie’s the one who eats practically everything she brings home.

It’s Christmas, which means more than just the usual scones and crullers and bagels and crumpets; it means specialty cakes brought in by bakers eager to land a permanent contract with Henrik’s. Last week was Magpie’s Bakery, with their fancy lorry in the loading bay and a giant cake in the shape of Queen Elizabeth on display in center of the bakery area.

This week, there’s no fancy lorry; there’s just a skinny bloke in a battered blue van and a pinstriped suit. An hour before Henrik’s opens, while Rose is cleaning the espresso machine, he bounces right up to the baked goods counter, wild thatch of chestnut hair bobbing right along with him.

“Where should I set up?” he asks, nodding at the box full of fondant-covered petit-fours in his arms.

Rose points at the large round table off to the side. “You got Prince Charles in that little box? Doesn’t look half the size of the cake we had in last week.”

The grin he flashes at her makes Rose’s stomach do a little flip.

“Nothing as boring as a prince in this box,” he replies, brimming with complete self-confidence. With a cheeky wink, he turns and gets to work.

Rose keeps an eye on him as he bustles around the table, unpacking a big rectangular cake and a strange circular metal structure, not to mention the box full of fondant-covered petit-fours.

“Oi, Tyler!”

Rose flinches, whirling around to find her manager hovering in the door to the back, a frown on his face.

“Quit ogling the delivery man and get back to inventorying! We open in less than twenty minutes!”

Face burning hot, Rose pretends not to notice as said delivery man shoots a pointed look her direction. Instead she slides open the nearest bakery case and crouches down, eyes locking onto the tray of muffins in front of her. She keeps them fixed there, too, until there’s a  _tap tap_ on the glass.

The delivery man’s crouched on the other side of the bakery case, just at her eye level, with a grin on his face.

“Run for your life,” he mouths, nodding to his left. She looks, realizes her manager is standing in the door, still watching her. But from this angle, he can’t see the bloke in the pinstriped suit.

What sort of delivery man wears a suit, anyway?

Rose can’t stop the smile that spreads across her face – can’t stop the way her tongue pokes out of the corner of her mouth, either. He notices, too, his gaze going fuzzy as he fixates on that little bit of pink for a second.

Making a shooing gesture, Rose mouths, “Go away!”

He shakes his head, uses his fingers to make a gesture that leaves Rose gaping at him. He’s pointing and poking and …  _is he propositioning her through the bakery case?_

He’s mouthing something, too, but she’s so focused on his fingers, long and slender and engaged in such an obscene gesture, that she doesn’t notice. After a moment of failing to get his point across, Rose gaping at him like a fish, he finally says in a voice that’s far too loud, “Toothpicks!”

Rose pops up so fast, she nearly cracks her head on the top of the bakery case. The delivery man rises to his feet, too.

“How on earth does  _this” –_  Rose glances around to make her manager’s gone from the door, then mimics his gesture – “mean  _toothpicks?”_

“I dunno,” he says, rubbing at the back of his neck and shrugging, beginning to look self-conscious. “Pointy, poky? Y’know, for sticking in places? I only need half a dozen of them. The toothpicks.”

All of this ridiculousness warrants a frown, but Rose can’t muster one to save her life. She snickers instead, reaching over to grab a handful of toothpicks and shoving them at him. “Get out of here, before you get me in trouble.”

“Ohh, trouble. I like the sound of that,” he replies merrily, rocking back on his heels before he walks off to finish his job.

Ten minutes later, the soft sound of machinery starts up from his general direction. Overcome with curiosity, Rose pops her head up, staring across the gleaming glass of the bakery counter.

On the display table, he’s built a perfect replica of the Eye.

At the bottom of the ferris wheel is a large rectangular cake frosted to look like concrete, surrounded by little sugar-spun people waiting in line. The metal has been constructed into support struts and two large hoops; between the hoops, all of the little oblong petit-fours have been expertly suspended. They’re perfect replicas of the cars, windows painted with food coloring, complete with little faces looking out. The wheel is slowly turning, the petit-fours full of passengers riding around and around.

It’s a spectacular sight. Light years better than the Queen last week.

The delivery man turns around, beaming. “What do you think?”

“Who made that? Who do you work for?” 

“Bit of a freelancer,” he replies, edging closer to the bakery counter — closer to Rose. “Don’t work for anyone, really.”

“You …  _you_  made that?” She points at it, behind him, but he doesn’t turn to look. “You own a bakery?”

“Nahh. My flat’s a few blocks that way,” he says, nodding vaguely, and she has no idea what direction he could possibly mean. “The oven’s old, and sometimes she’s fifty degrees or so hotter than she reads, but she’s reliable enough.”

The fact that this delivery man isn’t just a delivery man, that he spent hours in his flat crafting this magnificent piece of moving confectionary architecture – Rose is so astonished she can’t take her eyes off of it.

Which is a good thing, as it happens; the left support strut begins to slip – minute, at first, but more noticeable as the entire hoop structure shudders, mid-rotation. Rose makes a strangled noise of panic, somehow manages to shout, “Look out!”

She’s moving at the same time, dashing out from behind the bakery counter so fast she knocks a tray of croissants across the floor. The impact leaves a haze of butter-crusted flakes in the air behind her, but she isn’t thinking about the croissants or how furious her manager will be or anything else; she has to get to the cake — that mad, beautiful, perfect cake — before it hits the floor.

Dashing right past the bloke, her arms outstretched, she catches the support strut as it’s about to give out completely.

He whirls around, mouth open in astonishment. Her hands are busy holding the cake, and her bangs have fallen down into her face, so she blows them ineffectually upward with a puff of air. She’s still flushed from exertion and excitement, and this is certainly the most interesting thing that’s happened in Rose’s short retail career.

“Blimey!” he says, coming over to re-plant the support struts while she holds everything still. When he’s done, and the Eye is rotating once more, he impulsively sweeps Rose into his arms, squeezing firmly. He’s even lankier than he looks, but he’s strong, and warm, and smells like cinnamon and soap. Her heels come up off the floor as she leans into him, just before he sets her back down and steps away.

“You’d be dead without me.” She grins at him cheekily, hardly resisting the urge to shove her hands into her pockets, to mimic his posture. He’s a bit breathless.

“Yeah, I would,” he replies, grinning back. “I’m the Doctor, by the way”

“I’m Rose Tyler.” Then it registers, exactly what he’d said. “Hold on a minute, you’ve got a doctorate in cake-baking?”

He lifts one eyebrow, puckering his mouth. “Something like that.” Pausing, he gives her an appraising look. “Do you like chips, Rose Tyler?”

“Maybe. Why?” she retorts, and there’s a fluttering inside her chest because she’s certain he’s going to ask what she’s doing after her shift, and she’s equally as certain of her answer. The way he’s looking at her, the fascination in his gaze; the way Rose’s hands are ice cold, and her face is burning hot, and she’s still thinking about his ribs stretched against hers when they hugged … there’s a fantastic inevitability to everything, really.

“There’s this chippy ‘round the corner, it’s not far –”

“I’ve got a long day ahead,” Rose interrupts, nodding toward the escalators that have just started moving, and the distant sound of customers entering the store.

“Ah.” The Doctor looks crestfallen, but he’s trying to disguise it, to shrug it off.

“Although you’ll be stopping around again to make sure she’s sturdy?” Rose nods at the Eye, rotating away beside them.

The Doctor’s face brightens. “’Course, ‘course I will! Don’t want her toppling over.”

“Then maybe I’ll see you around, Doctor.” Heart hammering away, Rose slips behind the bakery counter and doesn’t look at him again. 

A few weeks later – after two dates at the chippy, a mad adventure in the linens department with a batty saleswoman named Cassandra , and the Doctor landing a permanent contract as Henrik’s exclusive novelty cake-supplier – Rose is standing in the kitchen of the Doctor’s flat, next to that big, battered old oven.

The Doctor’s teaching her to make buttercream, and Rose makes a mess with the mixer, icing flying off the still-spinning paddles and splattering everywhere. Shrieking with laughter, she tries to wipe it off her cheek and only smears more with her frosting-covered fingers. The Doctor is laughing too, pink icing dotting his spiked hair. His arms dart around her, reaching out to switch off the mixer, but he doesn’t draw away again when he’s done. He’s pressed against her back, and his laughter turns to a low chuckle as he spins her around, pinning her hips to the edge of the counter with his own.

“Rose Tyler.” Reaching up, he swipes a dab of icing from her temple, just beside her hair. “You’re all pink and yellow.”

Brown eyes warm and focused on her mouth, he leans forward and captures her bottom lip between his own. His tongue swipes across, slow and soft, and he draws back, smiling a little and licking his own lips thoughtfully.

As far as first kisses go, it’s spectacular and simple and tastes like everything Rose has ever wanted.

“Mmm, needs more milk,” he says.

“I should have a try,” she replies, staring at his mouth in return, at the dab of pink icing on his chin. There’s icing  _everywhere,_ actually – his neck, his jaw, his mouth and cheeks. Rose decides that she’s going to clean it off of him inch by slow inch. “Y’know, if I’m going to get a well-rounded education in baking.”

Dipping her head down, she sucks the Doctor’s index finger into her mouth, the one he’d used to wipe icing off her temple. Sliding her tongue across the pad, she lets it go with a pop. He stares at her with wide eyes and a smile, on the verge of saying something else, but Rose doesn’t give him a chance.

Coming up onto her toes, her lips crash into his, and her icing-covered fingers slide around the back of his head. 


	8. Times When It's Acceptable For the Metacrisis to be Called Something Besides "Doctor"

When the skinny man in blue and red pinstripes walks in the door of the pub, he seems lost for a moment – eyes swiveling back and forth as he surveys the crowd, looking for something. Sitting at the bar with a drink, Rose waits until he spots her.

The corners of his mouth twitch, and he reaches up unconsciously to rub at his wild brown hair. With a smirk at Rose, he makes a beeline to the other side of the pub, to a contentious darts game. Within seconds he manages to interpose himself between the players and the board, and he drinks one of their beers while hijacking the game and the conversation. Before the round’s over, they’ve ordered the Doctor another drink, and he’s flinging darts at the wall with terrifying gusto, and Rose isn’t watching him – she really isn’t – he just happens to be in her peripheral vision, while this blond bloke on the stool next to her chats her up.

After the darts are all permanently lodged in the wooden paneling, and the players have begged him to come along to the next pub with them – they’re in for an epic crawl tonight, apparently – the pinstriped bloke leaves them and sidles up on the opposite side of Rose.

It’s like she can feel warmth radiating off of him as he leans forward (and toward her, she notices), beckoning the bartender.

“I’ll have what she’s having,” he says, nodding toward the drink in Rose’s hand. It’s something the blond bloke bought for her a minute ago, in spite of her protestations that she didn’t want anything.

The blond bloke shoots a dark look at him across the top of Rose’s head. Rose swivels around to face the pinstriped man just as the bartender deposits an appletini in front of him. He lifts it to his nose and sniffs, lifts his eyebrows with a shrug, and knocks it all back in one long gulp.

The martini glass clatters to the bar, and the bloke doubles over, clutching his throat and making choking noises. Stomach fluttering, instinct kicking in, Rose hops down behind him, laces her arms around his waist, and executes the Heimlich maneuver.

A thin slice of apple – garnish from the drink – pops right out of his mouth.

“Oh my god,” Rose says, “are you okay?”

“Fine,” he wheezes, but he’s not – his face is still red, he’s panting for breath and holding his sternum where she’d thumped him hard. “Perfectly fine. That was some quick thinking.”

“Never seen anyone chug an apple slice before.” The corners of his mouth curl upward as she continues, “It’s the manliest way to drink an appletini, I’d imagine.”

“That’s me,” he replies, sitting up straight and facing her, finally. “Manly as manly can be. I’ve got hairs here, see?” He waves the back of his hand in front of her face. “Doesn’t get much manlier than that. I’m Fartam, by the way. Fartamalus Ming Shufflebotham the Fourth, but it would take up half my life if everyone said that every time, so my friends just say Fartam. Sometimes Farty, if they’re in a hurry. It’s quite thoughtful of them, really.”

Rose can’t help the small snort that she makes, or the way her body starts to shake as she tries to stifle her laughter. “Right. Hallo, Farty. My name’s Adeline Louisa Maria Horsey de Horsey. My family’s French. But my friends just call me Adeline Louisa Maria.”

“It’s a pleasure,  Adeline Louisa Maria,” Farty says. “You just saved my life, it seems proper I should at least buy you a drink.” He pauses. “I can, can’t I?”

Grinning, Rose settles back onto the stool beside him. The blond bloke is gone; she hasn’t given him a second thought. “That sounds lovely.”

Three hours, four drinks, a slow dance, and a handsy taxi ride later, the two of them are sprawled naked on the living room floor of Rose’s flat.

“Oh, that was brilliant,” he says, satisfaction etched on every line of his body. Rose giggles against his shoulder, stretching her thigh across his hips and pointing her toes at the opposite side of the room. “What was that called again?”

“Role playing,” Rose replies, opening her lips and scraping her teeth across his skin. “You make a dashing Farty, by the way.”

“It is rather dashing, isn’t it? I could make the switch permanent,” he replies, looking down at her and waggling his eyebrows. “Then if we ever do like your mum wants, and get married, you could be Ms. Fartamalus Ming Shufflebotham the Fourth!”

“Mmm, Ms. Shufflebotham. I like the sound of that.”

“It’s done, then,” he says, suddenly on the move. Before she knows what’s happening, she’s on her back, pinned against the carpet. “No more Doctor. New new man, new new single heart, new new name. Fartamalus Ming Shufflebotham the Fourth, it is!”

Before Rose can protest, he covers her mouth with his own, and his hands slide down her waist and between her thighs, and even if she’d had any sort of objection to give, it’s long gone. 

For the next three weeks, the Doctor introduces himself as Fartamalus to every single person they meet.


	9. Disco AU

> [#Some sort of ’70s AU](http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/Some-sort-of-%2770s-AU) [#Studio 54](http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/Studio-54) [#celebrities and high-powered Wall Street types and a woman named Rose Tyler who works as a cocktail waitress](http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/celebrities-and-high-powered-Wall-Street-types-and-a-woman-named-Rose-Tyler-who-works-as-a-cocktail-waitress) [#and a man named the Doctor who’s come over from London on business](http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/and-a-man-named-the-Doctor-who%27s-come-over-from-London-on-business)[#and the fact that he isn’t leering at her like the other men in the club](http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/and-the-fact-that-he-isn%27t-leering-at-her-like-the-other-men-in-the-club) [#he doesn’t swat her ass or call her ”sweetie”](http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/he-doesn%27t-swat-her-ass-or-call-her-%27%27sweetie%27%27) [#and when he leaves she finds an enormous tip on the table](http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/and-when-he-leaves-she-finds-an-enormous-tip-on-the-table) [#except it’s in pounds](http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/except-it%27s-in-pounds) [#and she stands there in the club with the music pounding around her](http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/and-she-stands-there-in-the-club-with-the-music-pounding-around-her) [#staring at the bills](http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/staring-at-the-bills) [#and thinking about how much she misses home](http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/and-thinking-about-how-much-she-misses-home) [#and she turns around trying to catch a glimpse of the bloke with the pinstriped suit and the brown hair](http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/and-she-turns-around-trying-to-catch-a-glimpse-of-the-bloke-with-the-pinstriped-suit-and-the-brown-hair) [#hoping maybe he’s gone onto the dance floor instead of left the club](http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/hoping-maybe-he%27s-gone-onto-the-dance-floor-instead-of-left-the-club) [#But he’s gone](http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/But-he%27s-gone) [#She goes home and normally she crashes — falls fast asleep](http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/She-goes-home-and-normally-she-crashes----falls-fast-asleep) [#but tonight she lays awake and thinks about that bloke](http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/but-tonight-she-lays-awake-and-thinks-about-that-bloke) [#thinks about home and London and all the things she didn’t realize she was missing so much](http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/thinks-about-home-and-London-and-all-the-things-she-didn%27t-realize-she-was-missing-so-much) [#and how she should’ve asked for that bloke’s number](http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/and-how-she-should%27ve-asked-for-that-bloke%27s-number) [#And when she comes in for her shift two nights later](http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/And-when-she-comes-in-for-her-shift-two-nights-later) [#he’s there again](http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/he%27s-there-again) [#and he grins at her and orders a succession of club sodas over the course of her shift](http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/and-he-grins-at-her-and-orders-a-succession-of-club-sodas-over-the-course-of-her-shift) [#and as soon as she’s off he asks her to dance](http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/and-as-soon-as-she%27s-off-he-asks-her-to-dance) (via [gallifreyburning](http://gallifreyburning.tumblr.com/))

_#[GO ON](http://somethingofthewolf.tumblr.com/tagged/go-on) (via somethingofthewolf) —- Okay._

He isn’t dressed like anyone else in the club – more like a banker from the ‘50s, pinstripes and short collar. For some reason, even though it’s outdated, it works on him. His tie is loose, the first few buttons undone on his shirt. His hair, which is shaggy and had been hanging down over his eyes, has gotten increasingly mussed as the evening has gone on; every time Rose walked by his table, brought him another club soda, they’d chatted. And when she’d walked away, he’d shoved his fingers into that wild mess of hair, tugged on it thoughtfully as he watched her navigate the crowd with her tray and drinks. 

 

A few other women sidled up to him over the course of the evening, brought pills and drinks and candy-pink tongues, and he brushed them all off, waited for Rose to bring him another club soda instead.

Normally by this time of night, Rose’s feet are killing her. The heels they require for the waitress uniform are four inch platforms. But following the bloke onto the dance floor, her feet don’t hurt at all, Rose is practically floating. Holding her hand, fingers linked between hers, he leads her into the center of the throng of dancers. 

“Heart of Glass” is thumping through the speakers, and as soon as he turns around to face her, Rose grins at him and starts to move. One hand still holding his, her hips sway, her feet rock left-right, her mouth moving to the words and her body undulating to the rhythm.

He stares at her for a moment, his brown eyes wide. Then he grins back and starts to move, too.

It’s all Rose can do not to laugh.

He obviously has no idea what he’s doing. His feet shuffle erratically, his hips are stiff and hardly moving, his other arm stuck straight out as he wiggles enthusiastically.

For some reason, it’s incredibly endearing. Guileless and unselfconscious and endearing.

Rose is beaming, suppressing giggles, surveying him from head to foot. He’s doing the same, watching her as she moves, scooting closer by millimeters. 

“Heart of Glass” ends, and the Stones’ “Miss You” starts up. Rose seizes the opportunity, closes the distance between them with a single step. Her hands slide under the edge of his pinstriped jacket, rest at the top of his hipbones.

He stares down at her, his smile fading into something breathless and wanting. He’s warm, he smells like cologne and cigarette smoke and sweat, and it’s intoxicating. His face is so close, tipped toward her, brown eyes filling her vision.

“Like this,” Rose whispers. Her body moves against his, hands guiding his hips in a smooth motion. He nearly stumbles, but she holds him steady, rocks back and forth with him a few more times until he seems to catch on. His midsection slowly loosens up, his feet shuffling along with the rhythm, thighs bumping hers. 

The Doctor’s hands cup each side of her waist, and now that he’s not fumbling to find the rhythm anymore, now that his body is loose, Rose slides her arms up to his shoulders. Neither of them is grinning; there’s something more serious in the small space between them, gazes locked and skin flushed hot.

The lights flare rainbow colors across the dance floor, the song changes, but neither of them steps back or loosens grip. The way his fingers tighten against her dress, it’s like a challenge and a question all at the same time. His gaze falls to her mouth and she realizes her tongue is pinched between her bottom lip and her teeth – it’s always had a mind of its own, that tongue.

The Doctor’s head dips closer, his hips pushing forward at the same time his mouth meets hers. A soft brush, gentle and eager, the stubble on his chin scratching her skin. She draws back, lowers her head as her stomach flutters and her fingers curl against the back of his neck, fingernails sliding through his hair. 

“Rose,” he breathes against her temple. He sounds like home, he feels like it, too – tall and skinny, his trainers dirty white beside her platforms on the flashing blue dance floor beneath them.

She looks up at him again. “Doctor,” she replies, so softly that he couldn’t possibly have heard her over The Ramones.

The corners of his mouth lift, and she tugs the back of his neck, comes up onto her toes in her platform heels, and kisses him again. Open mouths, and tongues, and neither of them is bothering with the pretense of dancing any more. She’s the one mussing up his hair, tugging and cupping his head; his arms gradually slide around her torso until she’s wrapped up in him. The dance floor has dropped out from under them and they’re falling, tumbling through space, the strobe lights flashing like stars. 

In the morning, in his hotel room, he stretches out on the bed with his hands behind his head and stares at her. She’s propped up on her elbow beside him, playing with his tie – the only article of clothing he’s managed to keep on since they stumbled through the door together hours ago. Her bare thigh stretches across his legs, her body warm and buzzing and the taste of him still on her tongue.

“I’m flying out to Singapore on business in a few hours,” he says, lifting an eyebrow. His adam’s apple bobs, long neck straining around his next words. “You could … come with me.”

It’s a quiet invitation, meant to be flippant, but laden with need he can’t completely disguise, not even when he shrugs and nonchalantly adds, “If you want.”


	10. 'Tis Better To Have Loved and Lost Than Never to Have Loved At All

At first, the cat-nuns fussed at the Doctor when they found him in Rose’s hospital bed. He’d waved away their concerns, pointing out the fact that her head pillowed on his chest and his arms wrapped around her had actually stabilized her vital signs. They folded their furry hands and, had their cat-mouths been capable of it, he’s sure they would’ve frowned at him, before they left them in peace.

He’s been lying here with her for three days now, listening to her breath grow feebler by the minute. His hand, still young and strong, clasped with hers, skin thin as tissue-paper, covered in age spots and draped over bones that have been twisted by arthritis. Her ear is resting over one of his hearts, and it seems to ease her pain – pain that has baffled the impressive healers a dozen different worlds over, pain that the Doctor has finally admitted to himself simply cannot be eased.

It’s inevitable, that pain. 

“Doctor.”

Her voice surprises him, because he’d thought she was asleep. She does that most of the time, now. Sleeps. One hundred twenty-four years is ancient for a human, he’s painfully aware of it. It would be considered miraculous back on Earth, except there’s nothing miraculous about the alien science the Doctor has brought to bear to give her those extra years. Even so, they haven’t exactly been what Rose would have wanted: she hasn’t run since she was in her seventies; they haven’t made love since she turned one hundred and two. 

“Hallo,” the Doctor murmurs, leaning down to press his lips to her silver hair.

“I want to go home,” she says, the words fragile as glass.

“Right now?” he asks.

“Right now.”

He could ask for one of those antigravity stretchers, but he simply stands up and scoops her into his arms instead. She doesn’t weigh much anymore, and she doesn’t have the strength to put her arms around him in response; they stay curled up against her own chest. The nuns don’t bother to protest as he walks past them, face set firm, because they’ve learned quite well over the last week that he won’t listen.

The TARDIS is in the lobby, beside the newly-installed little shop. The Doctor had used his psychic paper, bought balloons and flowers and holographic projections of rabbit-creatures that squeaked  _Get  Well Soon!_ to amuse her. She’d laughed and then groaned, because it hurt.

The Doctor manages to get the door open, kicks it closed behind them. Walks her past the console room and into their bedroom, settles her down on the bed. Climbs in beside her again, because she tugs on the sleeve of his oxford and rasps his name.

She turns her head up to examine his face, and he knows quite well what she sees. He’s aged some, too – in the way a Time Lord does, slowly. Other humans might mistake him for a man in his mid-fifties, laugh lines around his eyes and silver peppered into his thick brown hair.

He stares back at her, and for the first time it strikes him: not only does her body look old, but her eyes are so very tired. For nearly a century they’ve shone back at him, youthful and happy even while her face aged. But now, they’re dull with pain and exhaustion.

She reaches up, stroking his hair. “A wise man once told me that everything has its time, and everything dies,” she says, each word an effort.

“What a pompous moron that man must be,” the Doctor replies softly, trying to smile, failing.

“He has his moments,” she replies.

He wants to beg her not to go. He wants to tell her how much he still needs her, how the pain of losing her will surely trigger his regeneration, how he can’t imagine what he’s supposed to do when she’s gone.

He needs her to know how she saved him, over and over again – made him better. Always. 

How he’ll be lost without her. Adrift. Desolate.

Instead, he says three words: “I love you.” Presses his lips to her forehead. To her cheek. And then, tenderly, to her mouth.

When he pulls away, she’s gone. There’s no one looking back at him through her open eyes.

He cannot actually make himself move for hours. He doesn’t cry; there’s nothing but emptiness, no tears that can be wrung out of that void, not yet.

When the Doctor finally gets out of bed, leaves Rose, he stumbles to the TARDIS’ extensive garden. Takes along a shovel, staggers through the veritable forest until he reaches the bed of  _rosa kordesii_  she’d planted sometime in her mid-forties. They’ve grown thick and strong for eighty years, like pink and yellow fireworks in the lush green park. 

The Doctor won’t take her back to Earth – there’s no one left for her there anymore. They went to Jackie’s funeral decades ago. Mickey’s still in a parallel universe.  _I’ll never leave you,_ the Doctor had promised her in return, once. How could he abandon her on that planet now, cold and alone, when she could be here, instead? In this place that is both of their home?

He starts digging.


	11. At First Glance

With six pilots around the TARDIS console, everything is organized chaos. The Doctor flits here and there, pointing out buttons in need of pressing and levers in need of flipping. It’s glorious and familiar – his magnificent ship, her engines straining as she tows an entire planet through open space. 

There is one person at the console not waiting for the brown-clad Doctor’s direction, because he doesn’t need it. He knows exactly how to fly the TARDIS. He even remembers seeing TARDISes under the guidance of six pilots before, when he was young. And while the Doctor bustles and directs and frets about his ship, about the Earth being towed along behind them, this other Doctor is still and collected.

He’s watching the faces of his companions, because he knows this moment should be savored. Grinning from ear to ear, his single heart hammering so fast he keeps expecting his respiratory bypass to kick in. Except it doesn’t, of course, because he doesn’t have one.

The brown-clad Doctor doesn’t pause his frantic movement, and this Doctor wonders about himself. Is he always so shouty? Does his hair always stick up that much in the back? Has he always missed the way Jackie’s face puckers into such hilarious expressions every time he turns around?

The Doctor has seen himself before – other regenerations, brief meetings and lengthy adventures and, very occasionally, some form of comfort. ( _Just after the Time War, when he’d woken up with rough hands and big ears and blue eyes, he’d been pulled from the wreckage by himself – a future regeneration, tall and gentle and ginger_ ). But seeing another version of this Tenth him, for the first time, is morbidly interesting. Seeing how he doesn’t slow down to appreciate what’s happening right now, the beauty of all these remarkable people working together. Seeing how he doesn’t look Rose in the eye, how he brushes right past her over and over again.

Seeing him preemptively brace himself to be alone, again, because he can’t imagine a universe where that doesn’t happen, in the end.

There’s a subtle change in the sound of the engines, a shift in pitch so small most people wouldn’t notice it. This Doctor reaches out to adjust the compression levels on the temporal buffers, long fingers stretching toward a button. At that exact moment, the brown-clad Doctor rushes by again, popping his head over Rose’s shoulder and pointing at the temporal buffer button before he skitters away.

Rose immediately does as she’s told, reaches out, and her fingers land atop this Doctor’s. They push the button at the same time. 

Her attention swivels up to his face, her mouth lifting in a half-smile. Eyes full of warm curiosity, her tongue doing that thing it always does (and his toes curl inside his trainers the way they always do, in response), her fingers resting atop his.

For the first time in this new regeneration, touching Rose Tyler. A moment that ought to be heralded by trumpets or fireworks, but this Doctor decides that the chatter of the people he loves most, the warmth and happy teamwork suffusing his TARDIS, is enough to mark the occasion.

Rose feels different, now – or, more accurately,  _he_  feels differently, his nerve endings still crackling and fizzing with the remnants of regeneration energy. He thinks about lips and skin and tongues, and how those things have touched in the past. How many of his nerve endings are human, now? How many are Time Lord? Would everything feel different? Taste different? Be better? 

Would he feel and taste different, to her?

He grins back at Rose, and the pad of her finger slides along the side of his hand as she draws away. 

For an instant, he forgets they aren’t alone – it’s just the Doctor and Rose, inside the TARDIS, as it should be – until he lifts his eyes and sees the brown-clad Doctor standing beside Sarah Jane, his attention still fixed on that button where their hands had been touching. His doppleganger’s gaze meets his, his mouth tightening, and he turns away to say something to Jack.

“Spaceman,” Donna says, and this Doctor almost flinches with how close she is, with how she’s managed to sneak up on him.

He glances over his shoulder at her, smirking. 

“Quit the hanky-panky and mind the interspatial dimensional transceivers,” she says, poking him in the ribs. He jumps and makes a very dignified squeaking noise, and Rose glances at him sideways, grinning again.

“You know quite well the interspatial dimensional transceivers are just fine!” he retorts. “So watch it, Earth Girl.” He sticks his red trainer out behind him as Donna strolls by; she manages to leap over it with a moderate amount of grace, poking her tongue out at him afterward. 

The TARDIS shudders, and Rose’s hip bumps his. She looks up at him again. “What should I do?” she asks, gesturing to the levers on her console.

“That one,” the Doctor says, nodding at a lever close to the time rotor. “It’s tricky. I had it off by one notch, we went to see some Scottish werewolves and Queen Victoria instead of Ian Dury. Remember?”

“This one lever did  _that_?” she says, pulling on it too hard. The TARDIS shudders again, and he rides out the turbulence like a surfer riding a particularly troublesome wave; Rose does the same, grabbing his arm for support. 

“Sometimes a small change makes a universe of difference,” the Doctor says, reaching over with his opposite hand and adjusting the lever to the proper setting. His one heart is still hammering away, his cheeks warmer than he ever remembers them being before. “But sometimes it doesn’t matter at all.”

“Depends on the lever, I suppose,” Rose says, studying his face as though looking for something. Her fingernails curl into his blue pinstriped sleeve. And for an instant, the way her gaze sits on him, he’s the only Doctor in the console room.

“Exactly,” he replies.

“The brakes! The brakes!” The Doctor’s own voice rings out from the other side of the room, his brown-clad self gesturing to Donna wildly as he helps Martha push a sequence of buttons. 

The Doctor in blue grabs the parking break and yanks the lever down.


	12. End of Time Hangover AU

Can you imagine, though, during the time it took to tow Earth back into its place around the Sun (which, let’s face it, took at LEAST 24 hours if not longer), if that Team TARDIS got totally hammered and blacked out? Full-on  _The Hangover_  situation, because Jack had some Braxian gin in a flask in his pocket, and he put some in everyone’s little plastic cup. (The Doctor was pretty pissed on several counts, first because Braxian gin is illegal in most civilized systems for exactly the reasons that unfolded on the TARDIS, and second because he realized the flask was actually dimensionally transcendent, bigger on the inside — and Jack had nicked it from the TARDIS before he got stranded on the Game Station.)

And so everyone wakes up, sprawled across the console room in various and sundry embarrassing situations.

Well,  _Donna_  didn’t think the situation she found herself in was embarrassing, but Jack  _did_  feel embarrassed, which was a strange turn of events.

And TenToo kept stammering apologies to Rose about where his hand ended up, blathering on about how half-human metacrises don’t metabolize alcohol efficiently while his face got redder and redder.

Ten snorted and rolled his eyes at TenToo, insisting he (with his superior Time Lord physiology) was  _quite_  cognizant the entire time — except when he turned around, everyone else saw there was a sign taped to his back, in Jackie’s handwriting, that said “Most Pompous Asshole in All of Time and Space.”

Donna and TenToo started giggling at that, and Ten whirled around and stared at them with his best Oncoming Storm face, except he was  _actually_  so hungover that his Oncoming Storm looked more like an Oncoming Hurl. Which just made Donna and TenToo giggle even more.

They all staggered off to the TARDIS kitchen, Jackie insisting she was going to make everyone some tea. But once they got to the kitchen, they realized that Martha and Mickey were missing. No sign of them whatsoever. 

_They’d lost Martha and Mickey somewhere in the TARDIS._


	13. Competing Haberdasheries AU

Rose Tyler loathes him.

She loathes his ridiculous velvet suits, and that he can’t be bothered to at least put on proper shoes to match, and he strolls around in ridiculous white Chucks instead.

She despises the fact that he opened his specialty gentleman’s store directly across the street from her boutique, as though  _velvet menswear_  was enough of a fashion commodity to base an entire business around.

She hates that he hasn’t gone belly-up and slunk out of the neighborhood yet, back to whatever alien planet is populated by velvet-suited oddballs. She hates every single day she’s arranged the mannequin display in the front window of her own shop, and his “Velvet Suits ‘R Us” sign gleams at her from across the street in that unearthly shade of blue.

She can’t stand how he’s completely ignorant of real fashion — he stocks any and everything that catches his eye. On a  _whim_. Without a clue as to what’s happening on the runways this year and next. And somehow there are enough gullible blokes in London to keep him in business, to get talked into purchasing three-piece velvet suits as though they’re being invited on some wild, thrilling adventure. 

She dislikes his incessantly friendly attitude. The way he takes her insults as though they’re meant as constructive criticism, grinning like he understands something no one else does, and one particularly infuriating afternoon,  _winking_  in response. She especially dislikes the way her stomach flutteredand her cheeks grew warm. And she dislikes the dreams she had after that, too — every vivid detail. 

She’s irritated by the fact that he decided to come to Fashion Week this year, and that he somehow managed to end up sitting just in front of her, so she was forced to stare at the lean, velvet-suited line of his torso and the wild chestnut shock of his hair for two full days. His hair, which is obviously as pleasantly startled about life as he is.

She’s put out by the way she wished he would turn around and talk to her a few more times than he actually did; and put out because he didn’t notice her dress, which happens to be the same unearthly blue color as his shop sign.

She’s mildly annoyed to discover, behind the BFC tent, that his hair is as soft as it looks, and he smells like nutmeg and aftershave.

And he’s quite a fantastic kisser.

She only minds a little bit, that he leaves his velvet waistcoat at her flat, and she has to cross the street and step foot inside his shop to return it to him the next evening. 


	14. The Trouble with Treadmills

 

I just imagine that on the TARDIS (before Doomsday), there was a little gym that the TARDIS had created for the companions at some point — she’d resigned herself to the fact that the Doctor was bringing in strays of a physiologically inferior species, and decided if he was dead-set on doing this repeatedly, the least she could do was give them the facilities to help them keep up with the Doctor. 

Of course, the Doctor never really paid attention to that little gym room, because he never needed it. 

But Rose did go in there and jog on the treadmill on a regular basis (it took her a while to figure out the controls, all circular Gallifreyan writing, but after a bit of trail and error she’d worked it out), when they were just idling in the vortex and the Doctor was off tinkering in his workshop and whatever. 

The Doctor didn’t  _realize_ she went in there occasionally, though, until he was in the middle of soldering some complicated circuitry, and decided he needed another set of hands to hold a few wires together (and also he’d been making brilliant remarks aloud for the last few minutes, decided it made him seem daft to share his brilliance with an empty room, and it would be markedly  _less_ daft if there was another pair of ears there, and a mouth to make appropriate noises of appreciation for his brilliance). 

So he tracked down Rose in the little gym, and there she was jogging on the treadmill — _bouncing_ on the treadmill, actually — he’d never noticed how much  _bouncing_  happened, during the times they were running toward or away from trouble, because she was usually a step behind him or beside him. 

It was magnificent, really — all the bouncing, her long stride, the way her arms were churning, her face glowing with a sheen of sweat and her attention so focused — and the Doctor just stood there, staring, his mouth hanging open in an entirely dignified manner. 

Later Rose told him that he’d made a choking noise, but the Doctor is  _entirely_ certain he did no such ridiculous thing, but  _somehow_ she became aware of the fact that he was there. Not just aware of, but startled by. Her head turned, her eyes popped open wide and her legs went right out from under her. The belt on the treadmill kept turning just long enough that she shot off the back, flew into the side of the Andromedan sauna.

The Doctor, having completely forgotten about whatever needed soldering, spent the rest of the afternoon plastering the scrapes on her knees and being impressive in the kitchen instead, baking Gallifreyan twarg-spice cookies for her while she sat at the table in the TARDIS kitchen, grinning at him.

And from then on, anytime Rose went off to the gym to exercise, the Doctor made a point to keep her company. And it wasn’t because of the bouncing or the way beads of sweat rolled adorably down her nose — of course it wasn’t, and if anyone suggested otherwise, the Doctor would deny it vehemently — but just because he was worried about the possibly faulty machinery, and whether she might get injured again, and didn’t want her to be alone.


	15. Words

In the beginning, after the end of the earth but before chips, Rose was careful with words. They were a commodity she wasn’t sure how to use with the Doctor. He spoke all the time, but never really said anything at all. On the other hand, Rose spoke her mind constantly. But standing on the bustling London sidewalk that day, her head full of the exploding sun and the end of her world, she treated words like eggshells.

Devastation.

In that crowd of pedestrians, for only the second time since they’d met, the Doctor really  _spoke_. “You think it’ll last forever, people and cars and concrete. But it won’t. One day, it’s all gone. Even the sky. My planet’s gone. It’s dead. It burned, like the Earth. It’s just rocks and dust …  I’m a Time Lord. I’m the last of the Time Lords. They’re all gone. I’m the only survivor. I’m left traveling on my own, because there’s no one else.”

 _I’ve shown you the raw, devastated hearts of me; I’ve made yours raw, too,_ he said without saying it, his blue eyes so very unyielding _. Can you bear that? Can you bear me?_

What kind of reply does a nineteen-year-old girl make, when she’s just witnessed the destruction of her planet and seen it restored again with the twirl of a TARDIS rotor? When she’s aching and reeling and standing next to the most mad, wonderful man in existence?

Careful words. Precise. Specific. A small promise.  _For today, yes. I can bear it. I can bear you._

“There’s me.”

~~~~~

In the end, after the Olympics but before the final visit to Jackie’s, Rose’s words were careful once more. She stood beside the Doctor on a wind-beaten cliff, overlooking a craggy landscape. This planet had burned long ago, but somehow life sprang up in the wake of destruction. Plants, water, and creatures so magnificent they defied the laws of physics with their flight. The Doctor brought her to this once-decimated place to bask in its beauty. He told her about the impossible odds of regrowth and this planet’s inexplicable, unparalleled existence.

Miracles.

They stood together in comfortable silence for a long time. He turned to her, his hair wild in the breeze. His words were few; his tone held a universe of meaning. “How long are you going to stay with me?”

 _Here are the beating hearts of me,_ he said without saying it, his brown eyes so very tender.  _Miraculous. Whole. Yours._

What kind of reply does a woman give, standing beside the man who has shared with her all of time and space? When he’s exposed the breadth of her bravery and strength, and shown her the infinite wonder of existence?

Rose speaks carefully this time, too – not because she’s uncertain, but because he must understand the depths of her promise.  _This single word means every part of me, devoted to you in return._

“Forever.”


	16. Human Nature AU

“Can I see it?”

Nurse Tyler has been bouncing with nerves the last few minutes, ever since he told her he was nearly done, and he’s sorry he said anything, because now he’s lost his excuse. He can’t sit and gaze at her with impunity any longer; it will be different, when she’s not sitting for her portrait.

With a few swipes of his fingertips, he carefully smudges the pencil marks in a few places, softens a few lines. Traces over the rolling waves of her gloriously curly hair, the curve of her pink cheek.

“Of course,” he finally answers, putting the pencil on the table and coming to sit beside her on the couch. His stomach flutters as he hands her the finished product – what if she doesn’t approve? What if she thinks poorly of his skill? His gaze is riveted to her face even as her attention is riveted to the drawing.

Her cheeks grow red and the corners of her mouth turn up – a smile, the tip of her tongue caught between her bottom lip and top teeth, and heat blossoms in John’s chest, fluttering under his ribcage and radiating up his neck and  _surely_ Nurse Tyler sees his blush, as well.

“You’ve been too kind,” she exhales. “You’ve made me too beautiful.”

He doesn’t look at the picture, his attention fixed on her face – the faint, hardly noticeable freckles on her forehead, the elegant shell of her ear, the rounded perfection of her nose, the dip of her chin directly beneath her bottom lip. Her honey-colored eyes finally lift from the drawing to meet his, and her pupils are enormous, black and shining back at him, as infinite and mysterious as the night sky.

He could fall into those eyes and lose himself forever, spend the rest of his days exploring them like a character from one of Jules Verne’s novels.

“It’s how I see you,” he says, and it’s a lie, because no man on earth possesses the artistic skill to capture Rose Tyler’s beauty.

“Widows aren’t supposed to be beautiful.” She lets out a small huff of air, something close to a dry laugh. “That doesn’t seem fair, does it, Doctor?”

It’s a strange affectation of hers, this penchant for calling him Doctor instead of Professor Smith. It’s true, he does have his doctorate, but everyone else calls him Professor. He loves to hear the title come out of her pink lips, not because it gives him a sense of authority or power, but because the way she says it, it’s more intimate than if she simply called him  _John._ It’s like a term of affection, or an endearment.

It’s a word he could imagine being whispered into his ear, full of desire and need.  _Doctor._

He’s moving before he thinks, which is probably a good thing, his hand coming up to stroke the curls along her hairline, pushing them back with his long fingers, letting his fingertips slip between the golden strands. Her eyes flutter and her breath catches, her chest hitching as she responds to his touch.

He leans forward, tentative, giving her every opportunity to pull away or slap him or … but she doesn’t. He’s studied her mouth for more time than he’d care to admit, admiring the perfect architecture of her lips, the curve and dip and movement of them, but when he touches them for the first time, it’s nothing like the removed, academic analysis he’d imagined.

It warmth and softness, pink and moist and the tip of her tongue is just  _there –_ it’s always just there, doesn’t seem to be something she does on purpose, just a habit – but now it touches  _his_ lips, and if he was thinking about it (which he most certainly is not) he might have imagined it an accident.

She makes a small noise in the back of her throat, a soft, breathy sound of need.

John Smith has always thought himself a gentleman, one who holds women in high esteem and goes out of his way to be respectful, but that needy noise shatters something.

He should be pulling back and putting distance between them, asking Nurse Tyler’s permission to court her (because he’s going to do that – he’s been doing that – he knows where he wants this to end, and it’s with Miss Rose Tyler as Mrs. Rose Smith).

Instead, he pushes his body forward, opening his lips a fraction, and his tongue brushes hers. It’s electric, and apparently she feels the thrumming current of it, too, because her hand fists into the front of his tweed jacket, fingernails scrabbling against his chest. His fingers slide into her hair, cupping her head as he leans her back further and deepens the kiss, shameless now as she opens her lips and his tongue plunges inside.

Her tongue meets his, bold and confident, stroking and exploring with fervor. It’s his turn to make a noise now, a groan, and it’s just as needy as the noise Nurse Tyler made a moment ago. Moreso. His other hand slips around her waist, exploring the curve of it, finding the small of her back. He exerts pressure, shifting her closer as he turns his body, hips twisting toward her.

He breaks contact with her mouth, nuzzles his face along her cheek and plants kisses on her jaw, tongue finally touching the porcelain skin of her neck. Her fingers twist into his hair, hold him steady as he takes his time, his body pressed fully against hers. Every movement is magnified a thousandfold – the twitch of her hips, the rise of her chest as she gasps for breath, and  _surely_ she can feel the evidence of his desire pushing into her thigh.

She shifts that thigh, pressure and just the right amount of friction. A single word slips out of her: “Doctor.”

 _Oh god._ Soft and breathy and – dare he say – lustful, everything he’d imagined it might sound like.

In that instant, he knows that more than anything else, he needs to hear her scream it in pleasure.

It’s the most ungentlemanly thought Doctor John Smith has ever had in his human life.

He’s found her mouth again and is fumbling with the neckline of her dress when the door to his room crashes open. “Professor Smith! Professor Smith!”

He leaps back, face flushed and lips throbbing, and it’s like he’s been thrown into a cold stream. Nurse Tyler is running her hands along her skirt ( _oh god, it’s pushed up to her knees, had he done that? He doesn’t even remember – he ought to remember_ ).

Standing in the middle of the room, staring at both of them with a look of exasperation, Martha Jones has her hands on her hips.

“Martha!” he chides, “What have I told you about knocking?”

A look passes between Martha and Nurse Tyler, a commiserating look that John Smith can’t begin to fathom. Nurse Tyler shrugs, and Martha goes to the door, pounding on the doorframe and stepping right back inside. “We’ve got something we need to take care of, Doctor!” 


	17. Prompt Fic: Socks

Rose is on her way back to the bar when she notices the Doctor talking to the big, burly bloke who’d been eyeing her since they ordered drinks. Not just talking, but arguing, his forehead pinched in the way it does just before he dives headfirst into all that blood and anger and revenge she’s supposed to be fixing.

The instant the first punch is thrown, Rose lunges forward in panic, her thoughts full of broken noses and how she really,  _really_ doesn’t want to spend the rest of the night at the hospital listening to the Doctor complain that his perfect face has been ruined. A bit of a crooked nose might not be so bad, actually –  _leather coat and blue eyes and_ – no,  _focus_  – but all her panic is unnecessary.

Somehow the Doctor ducks the burly man’s fist, which lands on the neck of the  _other_ bloke behind the Doctor. The second bloke whips around and socks the first bloke right back. Then everything’s shouting and chaos and the Doctor’s hand gripping Rose’s elbow, guiding her out into the dark street.

His expression reminds her of Satellite Five, his face on the viewscreen of the Dalek emperor’s ship, his mouth forming the word “No.” The details are different now – narrower cheeks, more refined nose, smaller chin – but the determined fury is the same.

“What did he say?” she finally asks.

He pulls her into the nearest alley, shoves her against the wall, his thigh pushing her legs apart. As his mouth opens against hers, his tongue surprisingly gentle and his hands trembling against her waist, she realizes he  _needs_ her right now, just as much as he needed her to show him how to load a dishwasher yesterday or use the credit card to pay at the Tesco this morning. Arms wrapping around his shoulders, fingers twisting into his hair, she doesn’t ask any more questions. Because she needs him, too.


	18. Prompt Fic: Kittens

“Your mum got me a present.” It’s a basic statement of fact, but the Doctor makes it sound like an accusation.

Rose shrugs, stifling a grin. “I think she’s warming up to you.”

“She bought me a jumper. I already have jumpers. I  _like_  my other jumpers. I don’t  _need_  any more jumpers.”

"She went out of her way, you know. To buy it and wrap it and everything.” Rose reaches out to straighten his leather lapels, which don’t really need straightening, but she pulls the front of the jacket closed a little bit, because  _really,_ if she has to look at what’s underneath anymore she won’t be able to control her laughter. And being laughed at certainly won’t help the Doctor’s mood.

“The jumper has  _kittens_  on it,” he growls, yanking open the jacket and pointing to the little knit creatures with the same righteous fury he usually reserves for aliens bent on genocide, or Jack Harkness when he’s in proximity to Rose. 

"You look sharp,” Rose protests, crossing her arms, as though she can restrain her giggles by hugging them into her chest. 

At that moment, Jack walks into the console room. “Doctor! You look positively cuddly this morning!”

The Doctor’s eyes pop open wide before narrowing into slits. “That’s it!”

He rips off his jacket and tosses it onto a coral strut. Without hesitation, he yanks off the kitten jumper, dropping it on the grated floor before marching out of the room, bare-chested, heading deeper into the TARDIS.

When his muscled back finally disappears around a corner, Jack and Rose turn to look at each other, mouths hanging open. 

“Remind me to send your mom a thank-you note,” Jack says.


	19. Prompt Fic: TenToo/Rose - Camera

“Doctor!” Rose storms into the flat, hands full of glossy black-and-white photos. Unceremoniously dumping them onto his lap, she crosses her arms and glowers at him. “Guess what the girls in the Torchwood surveillance department delivered to my office this morning? Just guess. Go ahead. _GUESS_.”

Sitting on the couch under a landslide of grainy traffic-camera images, the Doctor’s eyes widen and his hand moves to rub at the back of his head. He knows by Rose’s tone of voice he should be serious right now, but presented with the pile of rather pleasant photos, he can’t stop the grin that breaks across his face. “Rose, these are really quite flattering. You look positively radiant.” 

"This is your fault.” Her tone shifts to mimic his deeper voice: _“There’s no one else out this time of night, Rose! This is a classic coming-of-age experience for human males, Rose, and if there’s anyone who’s human now, it’s me! The backseat is certainly big enough and—”_

“Rose Tyler,” he interrupts, “you weren’t complaining at the time. As a matter of fact, I have incontrovertible evidence right here to prove that you were quite enjoying yourself!” He reaches for her hand, pulling her into his lap as he jovially brandishes one of the photos. She’s blushing from her neck to her hairline. “Just look at your face right here – oh yes, you were  _certainly_ enjoying yourself. We ought to hang this one over the fireplace!” 


	20. TenToo/Rose

Rose came to the gala because it meant something to Pete, and even after the kind of day she’d had at Torchwood, she didn’t want to let him down. He was really good at this CEO stuff, being the public face of Vitex and running everything behind the scenes, and she didn’t know exactly when it happened but in her head he’d stopped being the  _other_ Pete and just started being  _Pete._ He would’ve understood if she bailed, but she put on her black dress and came anyway.

Once they’d been ushered to their table, though, Rose could hardly sit up straight. She’d only just washed off the slime from the alien they’d rounded up and herded off-planet, and she could still smell it on herself, even if the Doctor promised it was all gone. She’d told the Doctor she was fine, smiled and posed for the roving photographers, but he saw through her bluster. He always did. 

During dinner his hand rested on the back of her neck as they listened to board member after board member give speeches, his thumb rubbing small circles over her sore muscles. He waved over the waiter every time her water glass was empty ( _It’s important to hydrate after being exposed to Muntrake bile, Rose,_ he murmured, and she leaned back against his shoulder, tucking into his side as he put his arm around her). He asked for an extra serving of the chocolate-banana mousse and let her eat half of it ( _Oh quit complaining,_ he whispered into her hair, lifting the fork to her lips, and this once she did what he asked because it was really quite delicious, and his fingers were warm where they cupped her opposite elbow, and  _he_  didn’t smell like Muntrake bile, he smelled like clean skin and aftershave and  _Doctor_ ).

On the way out of the building, when they were finally headed to the car, she didn’t bother trying to walk upright by herself. He was a tall anchor, his arm steady across her back and waist, his grin unfailing toward the camera even as she only managed a tired smirk. He was saying things to the photographers, praising Pete and Vitex and using all the right words for the press ( _for once_ ) until they were in the back of the limo Jackie had arranged for them. 

Rose sighed deeply as the limo pulled into traffic, tucking her face into the crook of his neck and curling her legs across his lap as he took her in his arms. He was talking, just like always, telling her about a species born without eyes,  _but they developed a recording device to embed in their brains at birth, so they’re walking cameras, Rose, and they consider it the highest form of flattery to take a picture of someone else, because it means dedicating memory storage. Isn’t that funny? A finite brain, and they dedicate a bit of that brain to another one of their species by taking their picture._  

And as she closed her eyes and melted against the lean length of his body, his voice humming against her ear and her hand resting over the steady beat of his one heart, she thought about how she was so very good at being in charge and taking care of everything, but sometimes –  _often_  – letting the Doctor take care of her was the best of all.


	21. Photography Session

 

“You should take up photography,” Rose had said, because the Doctor always needed something technological to fiddle with, and a camera seemed like a good idea.

Pete bought him a high-end SLR with every last bell and whistle, but two days later the Doctor came home from the second-hand shop, beaming, an ancient, nonfunctional Polariod camera in-hand. He set to work getting the camera in working order and hoarded Rose’s laptop for days, researching everything from the aesthetics of photographic composition to developing his own negatives. 

He cornered her in the kitchen one morning before she went to work. “Today’s the day, Rose! Photography day! We’re going to start with a short session; I’ll set up the lighting and everything while you’re away and when you come home –” He waggles his eyebrows, bouncing on his toes like a boy on Christmas morning.

When she gets home from work, the living room is unrecognizable. There’s a horrifically cheesy matte painting of an forest, complete with a waterfall and stone bridge in the background. There are paper mache boulders and lights ( _she doesn’t want to know where they came from, oh god did he spend his day making a paper mache boulder? Really?_ ).

She has stepped into the photography studio of her childhood nightmares, the ones Jackie used to make her go to every year so they could have “nice” pictures to send to her grandparents.  _Tilt your head to the right, tilt it a bit more, put your hand on your forearm, now smile._

“It’s photography time, Rose!” he says, beaming at her, bunny puppet on his right hand and Polariod in the other.

“Right,” she says, a wicked grin crossing her face. “Hold on a sec, okay? Let me just put on some nicer clothes. I didn’t realize this was going to be a  _formal_ photoshoot.”

She steps out of the bedroom ten minutes later, all smoky eyes and blood-red lipstick, lace and stockings and very little else. His jaw is on the floor and the bunny puppet makes a loud squeaking noise as he crumples it in one hand. 

“I’m ready for my close-up, Doctor,” she breathes in his ear. 


	22. Archnemesis

Tony Tyler was an imaginative child, prone to fits of obsession. Jackie swore up and down she didn’t know where he got it from, but she suffered his phases with remarkable patience. When he was a dinosaur, she dutifully called him  _Rex_  instead of  _Tony_  and allowed him to stalk his macaroni and cheese all the way from the living room to the kitchen. When he was a fireman, she gave up scolding him every time he used his watergun to extinguish her scented candles and let him wear his plastic fire-helmet every afternoon when they ran errands.

So when Tony read his first  _Superman_  comic, it was no surprise he immediately plunged right into the mythos. Except to everyone’s surprise, Tony didn’t tie a towel around his shoulders and try to jump off the back of the couch. Instead, he fetched his camera and one of Pete’s fedoras and insisted that Jackie take him to the store “for more supplies.”

The next day, Tony presented the Doctor with a box, badly-wrapped in newspaper and decorated with a rubber lizard instead of a bow. Inside was a blue t-shirt emblazoned with the Superman sigil.

“I don’t know about your secret identity,” Tony said with a grave nod.

A grin spread across the Doctor’s face, and his eyebrows arched nearly to his hairline. “Is that so, Tony?”

“My name’s not Tony, it’s Jimmy,” Tony corrected with a shake of his head.

The Doctor took to wearing the Superman shirt beneath his button-down at all times. “In case of emergency,” he explained to Rose with a shrug, as he put it in the washing machine for the third time in one week. And each Wednesday when he and Rose came to the mansion for family supper, Tony dragged him into the backyard as soon as the plates were cleared. They’d disappear for the rest of the evening, the flash on Tony’s little plastic camera like a homing beacon alerting everyone else to the Doctor’s location. In those hours, Superman and Jimmy Olsen rescued baby squirrels from General Zod and foiled Brainaic’s elaborate plots to rule the world by means of the untrimmed shrubbery at the far end of the Tyler property.

Then, one Saturday, the Doctor showed up at the mansion with a large duffel bag. Jackie let him in and he disappeared with Tony into the backyard, as usual. Five hours later, Jackie finally went outside to see what was keeping the boys so very quiet and occupied.

She found them behind Brainiac’s shrubbery, along with an elaborate, humming metal contraption. Both Superman and Jimmy Olsen stared at Jackie with wide eyes, but before either of them could say anything, Jackie held up her hand for silence.

“What does it do?” she snapped at the Doctor.

He opened his mouth for a moment and no words came out, as though he was trying to decide whether a hail of nonsensical chatter or the truth would deflect Jackie’s wrath. “An antigravity machine,” he said in defeat.

Jackie nodded crisply and gestured at the contraption. “Torchwood property, I’m assuming?”

“Bits and pieces,” the Doctor said, glancing at Tony.

“Right,” she snapped. “Both of you, inside. I’m calling Pete and Rose.” With slumped shoulders and pouts, the boys both complied.

The incident hardly put a damper on their superhero antics, however. From then on, they simply refered to Jackie as “Lex Luthor.” 


	23. Bodyguard AU

After the embarrassingly ineffective security she’d seen at the front gate of the estate, Rose Tyler wasn’t sure what she expected to find, in terms of this new client. Of course she’d  _seen_ him in the movies: John Smith, the actor everyone called “the Doctor” because he was so good he could rescue any production and rake in money at the box office. At the ripe old age of thirty-four, he’d brought the Academy to its knees six times.

With a professional of that ilk, Rose sure as hell didn’t expect  _this_.

He was on a purple floatie in the middle of the pool. He was skinnier than she’d imagined, his hair a spiky brown mess atop his head, both his hands full of beer. The pool had a marble Greek goddess on each of the four corners and there was a bevy of real girls, too, decoratively sprinkled across the lawn chairs with their  _Cosmo_ s and their practically nonexistent bikinis. Not a single security person in sight, back here.

Rose came down the staircase to the pool deck, grimacing as she took in the too-short fence (so easily scalable), the overgrown bushes (perfect for anyone looking to hide), and the ridiculously expansive entourage (she’d lay money on the fact that this  _Doctor_ didn’t even know everyone’s name).

“Hey, Doctor!” It was the Doctor’s brother, Mickey, shouting from behind her. Mickey, who’d called her ‘baby,’ waggled his eyebrows, and offered her vodka shots the minute she walked in the house. “The new bodyguard’s here!”

The Doctor sat up on his purple floatie and yanked off his sunglasses. He took his time looking her up and down, his gaze lingering in a way that might have embarrassed or flattered other women. It only irritated Rose.

With a grin and loud bark of a laugh, he yelled back at Mickey: “Oi, nice one, mate!” He turned his eyes to Rose again and waved a beer bottle in her general direction. “Go ahead, sweetheart. Do your thing.”

Rose’s forehead wrinkled. “What?”

“I usually like it slow, but we’ve got lunch coming out in a minute, so hop to. Do your dance, take off whatever clothes you’re gonna take off – I assume all of them, since Mick arranged your little show – and then we’ll have sandwiches.”

Rose crossed her arms over her chest and slid her sunglasses down her nose, glaring at him. “I’m not a stripper, Mr. Smith. I’m from the security firm the studio hired.”

“I  _told_  you, man, she’s the new bodyguard,” Mickey said behind her, doubling over in laughter.

The Doctor blinked and shrugged. “Well, sweetheart, you don’t  _look_  like a bodyguard.”

“Security specialist. And my name isn’t sweetheart, it’s Ms. Tyler,” Rose said, shaking her head and frowning. The movie studio had contracted with her security firm to keep an eye on this asshole until his current movie was done filming, at least two more months; it was beginning to dawn on her exactly how  _long_ those two months were going to be. “What exactly were you expecting?”

With a shrug and a cheeky grin, he replied, “I dunno. Maybe someone a little more butch.”

“This is my disguise,” Rose said dryly, shoving the sunglasses back over her eyes. It was time to start cleaning house. She put her hands on her hips and raised her voice. “Now listen up! Everybody out!”


	24. Bad Wolf

[Zoom](https://66.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyqc67xpUb1qgv3pjo1_500.gif)

_The Doctor showed me a better way of living your life. That you don’t just give up. You don’t let things happen. You make a stand. You say no. You have the guts to do what’s right even when everyone else runs away. And I just can’t!_

Words still pounding through her veins, Rose collapsed onto the bench to catch her breath. She had taken off from the chip shop and kept running until her lungs burned and her eyes stung, and she hadn’t meant to end up at this empty lot, but here she was. She’d played here every weekend during childhood, kicked around a football with Mickey and his mates. This place was her past – every way London and the Powell Estates had shaped the person she became. The girl who didn’t finish her A-Levels. Who didn’t go to uni. Who worked in a shop and spent her days waiting for the next twenty-four hours, hoping they’d be more exciting than the last twenty-four but never daring to believe.

Mickey’s voice broke her reverie. “You can’t spend the rest of your life thinking about the Doctor.”

How he’d found her, Rose didn’t know – he must’ve run right after her out the door of the chip shop. His words pierced her melancholy bubble. It deflated into a misshapen pile of anger. Was Mickey really so thick? She’d already yelled at him – and her mum – so she didn’t bother to raise her voice again. “How do I forget him?”

“You gotta start living your own life,” Mickey said, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. “A proper life, the sort he’s never had. The sort of life you could have with me.”

The prospect danced through her head. Days working in a shop. Nights watching football on telly with Mickey. Someday, feeding and diapering squalling babies. Buying groceries. Taking a paycheck to the bank. Sweeping the floor and drinking a pint and pining after a position in management.

Funny thing was, there wasn’t anything wrong with  _any_ of that. It could be a good life. An excellent one, even. There was real happiness to be found in some of those things.

But Mickey was right – she had to start living  _her own_ life. Before the Doctor, she was in a holding pattern that revolved around Mickey and her mum. With the Doctor, she felt like she was along for the ride. And here she was back in London, still in the passenger’s seat. The Doctor might’ve thought he was protecting her, but all he did was show Rose exactly how much the life she was living  _wasn’t_  her own.  _Not_   _once_  had she decided the destination.

_Have a good life. Do that for me, Rose. Have a fantastic life._

And that’s what everything came down to.  _A fantastic life._ Anything short of a life with the Doctor would be less than fantastic. It didn’t have anything to do with what the Doctor could show her, or his TARDIS, or his astonishing lifestyle … it was  _him_. The man. Too curious for his own good, moody, intent on  _fixing_ everything, prone to stumble into every bit of trouble available. Gruff and rude and imperfect and the only person she could imagine going through life alongside.

This last year of traveling had been eye-opening, and Rose realized she’d been thinking of it as something of a gap year. An adventure before her real life began. But it wasn’t a gap year, not at all. It  _was_  the rest of her life.

Forever.

She wasn’t going to be a passenger anymore. And she wasn’t going to settle for anything less than fantastic. And those two things meant that, no matter how difficult, she had to find her way back to the Doctor.

In that moment of utter clarity, Rose lifted her eyes from her feet and stared at the blacktop of the empty lot. Scrawled in spraypaint were two words she was certain had not been there before.As though they had been written by an invisible hand while her thoughts crystallized, while she seized the controls of her own life, while she made the choice to find a way back to the Doctor, no matter the cost.

_BAD WOLF._


	25. Hand Holding

 

The Doctor had catalogued at least two dozen variations of hand-holding with Rose Tyler, but most fell into three primary categories.

First, there was the practical grip, meant for keeping together in a tight spot, good for running toward trouble or away from danger. Palms pressed together, thumbs and fingers wrapped tight around the outside of each other’s hands.

Second, there was the comforting grip, meant for reassurance and a reminding that the other person was present, that they weren’t alone in facing whatever challenge was in front of them. Fingers intertwined and fingertips pressed against the back of each other’s hand, with the barest brush of palms.

And third, but certainly not least in the Doctor’s mind, was the hand-holding that Rose initiated during those moments when it served no practical purpose. For instance, on any given evening in the TARDIS kitchen she’d come to stand with him in front of the microwave while the popcorn popped, and she’d nonchalantly caress his fingertips with her own. Or afterward when they watched  _The Princess Bride_ (his choice, of course), and she’d plop down on the couch beside him. He’d already had his arm resting across the back of the pillows, so it wasn’t like he made a  _move_ on her or anything. She’d fuss until he took off his leather jacket so she could settle her head his shoulder and pull his arm down across herself. And when she spent the movie playing with his fingers and stroking his palm with her thumb  _just like that …_ well … impractical hand-holding was highly underrated, the Doctor decided. 


	26. TenToo/Rose

The Doctor opened his eyes to find Rose’s face mere inches from his. Nibbling her thumbnail thoughtfully, she stared at him. He wondered how long she’d been watching him sleep _._  It was strange enough that he’d slept at all – being part human had its downsides, and dozing away half his remaining life was certainly one of them. 

“Good morning,” he said, swallowing a yawn. He wasn’t sure how to interpret the expression on her face, if that intense stare boded good or ill. If it meant second thoughts about the words they’d said last night, or the thing that followed. Well, the four things. Four things and the chocolate syrup.

 _Maybe she’s upset about the ruined sheets._  

He was gathering the momentum to say something – to deflect her misgivings with a hail of nonsensical chatter, to let her know it was all right and they could return to the way things were before the words and the chocolate syrup, that they could back off this path and never step down it again – when she broke the silence.

“It’s  _really_  you.” Eight months since the TARDIS disappeared from Bad Wolf bay, and Rose spoke those words as though they’d only just grown comfortable inside her head. The innerworkings of Rose Tyler’s mind were a mystery to the Doctor. He liked it that way, if he was being honest. 

“I’m still me,” he said, all seriousness. The exact same reassurance he’d given her long ago, just after he lost his short dark hair and big ears. “Very first word I ever said to you, trapped in that cellar, surrounded by shop window dummies – oh such a long time ago.” He reached out and took her fingers from her mouth, lacing them with his own. “I took your hand, and I said one word. Just one word I said, ‘Run.’”

His words had the intended effect. She smiled – beamed, actually. Pulled him close, embraced him so they pressed chest-to-chest. The Doctor could hardly breathe, with her so close and so very naked. 

Breath warm in his ear, she murmured, “Do you feel that, Doctor? Just there, on the right side of your chest." 

Her heart beating against his flesh, thrumming away just like the second heart he was missing in this human body. He couldn’t speak. Every part of his mind and body was focused on that strong, steady thrumming. He wasn’t lopsided anymore; Rose Tyler was the balance that made him whole. 

“I feel it,” he said, the words unsteady, laden with a flood of emotions he couldn’t begin to speak aloud.

“Good. Because that heart beating away in there, it’s not going anywhere. It’s yours. All right?”

Words failed him. His eyelids fluttered shut, closing against tears, and he kissed her. 


	27. Regeneration

The regeneration energy and radiation poisoning stung as it began to push through his cell walls and escape into the air. The inferno was far past the point where he could contain it; if he tried, he’d likely snuff it out altogether. Yellow-orange light cascaded from his hand like blazing mist, and he embraced the accompanying pain instead of ignoring it. It was all-consuming now, anyway, and he could no longer pretend it wasn’t there.

The holocaust was coming, preparing to obliterate every shred of his DNA, every trace of the man he was at this moment. He had been through this enough times to know how things would be different afterward. The next time he thought of Donna Noble, the new synapses in his new brain would fire, and his memories would be cast in a slightly different hue. When he recalled Rose, his new hearts would still pound, but his new body chemistry wouldn’t react exactly the same, and his very cells would no longer yearn for her quite so keenly.

_Yet there’s solace in the fact that in another universe, these arms will still hold her, this soul still ache for her in this particular way, living breathing proof of how much her presence has changed me – saved me – made me whole._

After regeneration, the Doctor would still be the Doctor, but the delicate nuances of this particular man would be lost forever. The energy flared inside of him, cresting as it began to eat away at his internal organs, tearing them apart and remaking them cell by cell.

_Allons-y. Let’s go._

It was a ridiculous thing to think –  _say aloud?_ – he wasn’t sure. He couldn’t have heard himself, anyway; his ears roared with destruction and renewal, with breaking bones and splintering cells. He had held back this regeneration long enough to help some of his friends, but there was more he needed –  _yearned –_ to do with these hands. More running to do with these legs. More wonders to see with these eyes. More sins to atone with this self. 

_I don't_ **_want_ ** _to go._

His back arched in agony, arms and legs rigid as his body dissolved into a storm of fire, every last particle bursting into oblivion and rebuilding itself, his marrow consumed with agonized itching and stinging torment. 

His last moment as this man was utterly excruciating. In the midst of the pain and destruction, one final word ghosted through these neurons and pounded through these hearts:  _Rose._


	28. Floe Fish and Blue Jackets

[ ](http://gallifreyburning.tumblr.com/image/16406978321)

On the northernmost continent of Omwiggom Prime, in the middle of a frozen and desolate landscape, the Doctor knelt with Rose on the ice. Dozens of fish, bright as living rainbows, swam just beneath the frozen surface of the water. Pulsing with light and color, they twisted and swirled in an elaborate dance, moving with the grace of eels. 

“These are floe-fish, Rose. They live their lives in pairs. Mate for life. You can tell which ones are bonded by the pattern of colors they emit – synchronous refraction of bio-luminescent light, specially adapted to this water’s high salinity and cold temperatures. Each member of the pair is always within the same spectrophotometric increment as the other. Each bonded floe-fish shifts to the exact same color as its mate, at the exact same instant, even if they’re half a planet away from each other. Remarkable creatures!”

Utterly entranced, Rose watched the floe-fish, and the Doctor watched Rose. One of the three suns of Omwiggom Prime set before he could tear her away from the radiant, dancing fish and lure her back inside the TARDIS. They spent the night bundled in blankets on the couch beside the fireplace, the Doctor fretting over Rose’s nonexistent frostbite and coming up with ever-more inventive ways to warm her up.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Three weeks later, in Pete’s universe, Jackie dragged Rose out of bed and to a department store. Both women had been stranded with only the clothes on their backs, and although Jackie had already burned several holes in Pete’s credit cards building up her new wardrobe, Rose hadn’t bothered to get out of the mansion. Not once.

Jackie’s one-sided conversation didn’t stop as she pawed through the racks. “You know, Pete’s offered you a place at Torchwood. He says they could use someone with your experience. I think it’d be good for you, getting out more often. Well –  _at all._  You haven’t gotten off the couch in weeks, and it’s not good for the size of your bum." Jackie held up a blindingly pink top, made even more garish by the store's fluorescent lights. "What do you think of this one? It’ll look nice with your skin, sweetie.”  Rose turned away without comment, listlessly shifting a few hangers on the rack in front of her.

She spotted the blue leather jacket crammed a the back of the row, half-falling off its hanger, sleeve dragging the ground. It wasn’t just  _any_  blue, either, but a particular shade. A bit brighter than the exterior shell of the TARDIS, but very unlike the vivid colors Rose had always worn. Something about this particular shade tugged at her.It  _resonated_.

Holding this blue jacket, Rose had a sudden memory of floe-fish and spectrophotometric increments and life-mates whose colors shifted at the same time, even when separated by half a planet. And none of these thoughts made any sense at all, really, because Rose’s new-new Doctor always wore brown. 

It didn’t matter.

“I’ll take this one, mum,” she said, shedding her fuzzy aqua hoodie and pulling on the not-quite TARDIS blue leather. “This one’s exactly right.”


	29. Dark Doctor

In this new incarnation, the phrase, “I’m sorry,” came readily to the Doctor’s mind and lips, even when he wasn’t admitting fault. He often said it to express regret or sympathy, or to acknowledge suffering and cosmic injustice that even he couldn’t remedy.

But here on New Earth, watching Cassandra die and be mourned only by a younger version of herself, the Doctor didn’t feel the slightest bit sorry. The phrase didn’t come to his mind or his lips, not once as she cradled her own expiring body and called for help. No regret. No sympathy. Nothing.

For the second time, Cassandra had put Rose in danger. Even more monstrous, Cassandra had  _violated_ her. Took Rose’s body, invaded her mind, perused her thoughts – the damning evidence spoken from  _his own mouth_ by Cassandra: “You’ve been looking. You like it.”

The Doctor ached to hear of Rose’s feelings; he’d imagined her whispering them, hand clasped with his, body close and warm and deliciously human. But never,  _never_ did the Doctor imagine he’d hear them because her autonomy had been taken away and her mind desecrated.

Cassandra had violated the Doctor, as well. Horrifying enough, but something he could perhaps forgive. His race was, after all, telepathic. His mind could accommodate a mingling of consciousnesses; it was equipped for the strain. The human brain, on the other hand, was delicate. Unaccustomed to bearing the weight of two consciousnesses. Miraculously, Cassandra hadn’t obliterated every trace of Rose when she pillaged Rose’s body. Even more miraculously, she hadn’t damaged her intellect or personality or any other of a thousand facets that made Rose  _Rose._

The Doctor’s hands balled into fists. His hearts thundered, full of shadows and blood. His ears roared and his vision turned grey. His wrath was a shaft of crimson, beaming through the center of his soul, illuminating universes laid to waste and realities annihilated. He saw the turn of the cosmos cease; he saw himself make it happen. His fingers trembled with the need to pull a trigger, to flip a switch, to build engines of destruction and put them to use.

His Rose. Violated. Nearly lost, just as he’d nearly lost her on Satellite Five.

Never again. Not even if he had to tear apart the fabric of reality. Not even if protecting her reduced him to ash and bone.

“Doctor?”

His Rose. Her voice reeled him back from the precipice, away from unfathomable depths of fury and destruction. He schooled his breath to evenness and his pounding hearts to sedation. For Rose. Because what she needed right now was comfort, not vengeance. 

The Doctor’s vision cleared. In front of him, Cassandra was dead. Without a glance back, he followed Rose into the TARDIS.


	30. First Night

Carrying her oversized hiking pack, the Doctor led Rose down the TARDIS corridor. He’d said hardly a word since they left London ten minutes ago.  Rose had a pretty good idea why he was so quiet: she was  _moving_   _into_ his TARDIS. He’d invited her to travel with him, there was no question about that. But she had the distinct feeling he didn’t mean to invite her hairbrush and her lip gloss and her underwear — or anything about her that bore the hint of domesticity.

The Doctor stopped in front of the room where she’d taken a nap after Platform One and Cassandra and the end of the world. “Did you like this one? There are plenty of others. You might as well pick one you like.”

Rose peered down the corridor, which stretched out of sight. “Well, this is pretty close to the kitchen and the media room, yeah?”

The Doctor shrugged. “It is today. Might not be tomorrow.” He glanced at the ceiling with a fond half-smile. “Depends on how the old girl’s feeling.”

“What about your room? Are you somewhere down there?” she asked, nodding at the seemingly infinite corridor.

Wrinkling his forehead, the Doctor shifted from one foot to another. “This room or not?” he snapped, his words impatient, an ineffective attempt to hide his discomfort.

“This one’s great,” Rose replied with a shrug. Fine. Let him be embarrassed.

“Right, in you go,” he said, nudging open the door with his shoulder and stepping across the threshold to drop her backpack on the floor.

Rose followed him inside and came to a dead stop, mouth agape. “Are you sure this is the same room?”

“I think I know my own ship, thanks,” he replied, rolling his eyes. “You not happy with it now?”

“No,” she said, a grin breaking over her face. “No, I love it!”

Before, the space had been comfortable enough, but much like a hotel room. Generic. Unremarkable. Plain furniture, plainly colored, plainly arranged.

Now, the room was lush with details, every one of them exactly what Rose would have chosen if she’d been given the choice: a pale pink comforter instead of white, a four-poster bed, a dressing table with nooks and crannies for her makeup and ponytail holders. The closet door was cracked just enough to reveal clothes, each item looking as though it had been plucked off the rack of her favorite store.

“Did you do this?” she gasped, throwing open the closet door and touching the hoodies inside.

“Do what?” The Doctor stared at Rose in genuine puzzlement.

“Everything’s different. Everything’s  _perfect!”_ she said, dashing to the bed, flinging herself onto the comforter.

The Doctor leaned against the bedpost and crossed his arms, watching her as she experimentally squished feather pillows. “The TARDIS wanted you to feel welcome, I suppose.” He paused. “The old girl likes you. She’s glad you’re here, Rose.”

His accent had deepened a little and he was staring at her, eyes very dark and very blue at the same time. Suddenly conscious of the fact that she was wallowing on a bed in front of the Doctor, she sat up and stared back. Her cheeks were burning, but she didn’t look away – she was flustered, but more than anything, she was curious.

The Doctor blinked and cleared his throat, the corners of his mouth turning up into a too-wide smile. “Welcome aboard, Rose.”

With that, he left the room.

 


	31. King Wenceslas

The snow is deep, and the Doctor has to lift his legs high as he and Rose trudge through the woods to the TARDIS. He isn’t sure how she’s slogging though the drifts with such ease, but she’s always ahead of him, practically skipping.

“I still can’t get over the fact that he’s only a duke. I mean, the song says  _King_ Wenceslas,” she says.

“Well let me tell you, hymn-writers aren’t known for sticking to the facts. And of all the hymn-writers I’ve ever met, John Neale was the  _worst_ for exaggeration. He told me his wife made the best pork-pies in all of Britain, and if that was  _pork_  in that pie, I’ll eat my tie.”

Rose’s giggles drift back to him on the night air. He wants to bottle the sound, to keep it buried in the depths of his pocket and pull it out when she’s not in the room. 

“Home sweet home,” she says, snapping him away from his thoughts and back to the deep, dark woods and the Christmas supper they just ate with  _Svatý Václav._ She unlocks the TARDIS door, stepping onto the threshold and turning to cock an eyebrow at him. She points up. “When’d you have time to put  _that_ up there, Doctor?”

“Put what where?” He looks up at the mistletoe draped across the top of the TARDIS, his face a mask of innocence. “Oh, look! That must’ve fallen from the branches above. Grows in natural abundance around this area of Bohemia, y’know. Practically a hazard, really, so much if it just tumbling down and liable to brain any passerby—”

She grabs him by the shoulders and her mouth finds his. It’s a brief moment of contact, warm and soft and tingling and if the Doctor’s thinking clearly – there’s a ninety-five percent chance he  _isn’t,_ but that’s not important – there might have been the slightest hint of tongue.

With another giggle, she disappears into the TARDIS. Grinning like a madman, the Doctor follows her.


	32. Superman AU

In retrospect, chasing the bomb-maker up the broadcast tower wasn’t the best of ideas. Of course, Doc wasn’t known for his restraint in a crisis, and this certainly qualified as a crisis. There was no way to evacuate the crowd from the park before the explosion, and the police were at least five minutes away. So up the tower Doc went, grabbing the bomb-maker by the cuff of his pants.

With a death-grip on cheap polyester, Doc realized he hadn’t the foggiest idea of what to do next.

The bomb-maker apparently had an idea, though. A few smashed fingers later, Doc was falling from the tower, followed by the bomb-maker and his explosive device. The ground rushed toward them, and with concrete mere feet away and a pancake-like death apparently inevitable, they were both heaved up and away with a sharp jerk. Not falling anymore; flying now, out of the park and into the skyscraper maze of downtown Metropolis.

Doc swiveled his head sideways – no small feat while being held by his collar – and saw the bomb-maker beside him, also gripped by the scruff of his neck. A quick glance upward at their savior, and Doc hooted in excitement.

“Took you long enough, Bad Wolf!” he called to her.

She looked back at him, a small smile on her lips, gold swirling in her dark brown eyes. “Doc Smith, always putting your nose where it doesn’t belong … you must be the most jeopardy-friendly man in Metropolis. I can’t leave you alone for a minute, can I?”

He grinned back cheekily. “I really wish you wouldn’t.”

She laughed. Doc’s stomach flipped as she swung down toward a group of patrolmen on the front steps of the Metropolis police station. After depositing the bomb-maker in their midst, she rocketed from the ground with Doc still in her grasp, hauling him up to the station roof.

When she set him on his feet and landed close by, Doc was gasping for breath – the exhilaration of nearly dying, of flying without an airplane, of being alone with Bad Wolf – it all left him wibbly in the knees.

Arms crossed, disapproval on her face, she said, “Really, Doc. You’re a reporter, not a SWAT officer. You should’ve waited for the bomb squad.”

“Is that what you would’ve done, Bad Wolf? Waited? When people’s lives were at stake?” He paused. “And my name’s not really Doc, y’know. It’s John.”

The corners of her mouth lifted just a little, and a hint of tongue peeked between her teeth. “Nah, I prefer Doc. Good nickname for a reporter: the Doctor, always looking for something to fix and make better. Always finding a spot of trouble to stumble into.”

“Yeah, well what kind of superhero name is Bad Wolf? Seems a bit villainous. Or pretentious. Or both.” He didn’t mean to sound so defensive, but the mere sight of her – blond hair streaming in the breeze, gold swirling in her mahogany eyes, blue suit hugging her curves in all the right ways – left his thinking rather muddled.

“If the Dark Knight works for an emo loner like Batman, then Bad Wolf works for me,” she replied with a smirk and a shrug. “Do me a favor and stay out of trouble for a while, Doc. I have all of Metropolis to look after, and keeping you alive is turning into a full-time job.”

Before he could reply, she was gone with a swish of air. He stared at the sky, mouth hanging open and thoughts racing a mile a minute.

The rooftop door slammed open with a  _bang_. He whirled around to find Rose Tyler, cub reporter, running toward him. “Doc! Doc! Are you okay? I saw Bad Wolf grab you and that other guy from the tower and –”

“Fat lot of good you are, Tyler!” Doc said, a touch of affection in his exasperation. “Here just at the end of everything, as usual. But oh, boy, have I got a story for the morning edition!”


	33. Bad Wolf Bay

Rose is adrift in the feel of him, long and tall and lean, lips needy against hers and  hands hot where they curl against her back. He smells like autumn leaves and electrical smoke and melting dalekanium.

The Doctor is staying and he’s leaving, both at the same time, and nothing makes sense.

If she lets go her legs will give out, so she grips tighter, threading fingers into his hair. His words, breathless and ardent, resonate in her head, syncopated with the thrum of his single heart against her chest:  _I love you._

For eternity all she hears is the roar of surf and the rush of blood in her ears. Then comes a familiar keening sound, one that restores strength to her legs. She pulls her mouth away from his. The Doctor and Donna have already closed the blue double doors and the TARDIS begins to phase away, vworping to nothingness. His arms are still wrapped around her, but he doesn’t try to hold her back when she tears away and stumbles toward the fading ship.

Her panic is instinctive and all-consuming – the Doctor is gone, again. She’s been left on this godforsaken beach, without a proper goodbye,  _again_. Every part of her is numb. Her cheeks, her chest, her legs, full of tremors and buzzing.

Everything except her hand, which is warm and steady. She looks down at familiar fingers laced with hers, hotter than they should be. He’s come to stand alongside her and stare at the empty beach where his TARDIS stood a moment ago.

Déjà vu overwhelms her: standing alongside the Doctor, watching the TARDIS vanish forever. They did this together only hours before on the main deck of the Crucible, when the Daleks plunged the TARDIS into the neutrino heart of their ship. The Doctor’s face had been a rictus of agony; Rose had gone to him, held his hand, so he wouldn’t be alone as he watched his beloved ship burn.

Rose was always the one to go to the Doctor when he needed her. Now, on this beach, losing his TARDIS once more, this new Doctor has come to Rose. Without invitation, without hesitation, without the pride that usually makes him hide his pain and need, he’s come to her. His breathing is shallow as he stares at the empty patch of sand where his ship once stood. The TARDIS was the only constant in his life for the last five hundred years, and now she’s gone.

The Doctor’s head turns and he meets Rose’s gaze. There’s grief in his expression, and scarcely-concealed panic. He must see something similar in her face, too, because his eyebrows draw together and he squeezes her hand.

He’s the Doctor, and he needs her.

She’s Rose, and she’s crossed universes for him.

Lifting her other hand, she presses it against his breast pocket, feeling the lump of TARDIS coral inside. “She’s still here. Part of her is still here.”

The Doctor rests his hand atop hers on his chest. “I’m still here, too, Rose. All of me is still here.”


	34. Martha/Mickey

After a year of horror on the Valiant, all Francine and Clive Jones wanted was for their daughter to live a normal life. They adored gentle Tom Milligan, who worked in a hospital, who took Martha on dates to the symphony and weekends to the Lake District. Tom, who tethered her to an average human existence.

He was everything Martha couldn’t settle for. The day Martha returned his engagement ring, Francine had a panic attack.

After the disappearing stars and the Daleks, Mickey materialized from nowhere. Francine and Clive weren’t keen on him. It wasn’t his accent, or what part of London he was from, or anything like that; his quiet confidence and determination frightened them.

Martha and Mickey fit together seamlessly – aliens, otherworldly technology, a passion for finding  _something to_   _fix_ – even when they weren’t working together, they functioned as a team. Every night before bed, Mickey loaded and double-checked her ammo clips. Martha always made sure his Torchwood and UNIT paperwork was properly filed. They both lit up like Piccadilly Circus when the other walked into the room. Martha’s parents saw clear as day that she would run hand-in-hand with Mickey down that extraterrestrial rabbit-hole, and they’d lose her for good.

In the end, Jack Harkness brought Clive and Francine around. They’d forged a familial bond with Jack during their year on the Valiant, nursing him as he recovered from each new death inflicted on him by the Master. They’d bolstered each others’ spirits, kept each other from giving in to despair, until Martha returned to them. After everything was over, Jack spent every Christmas with the Joneses.

When Martha broke the engagement news to her parents over Christmas supper, Jack was the one who soothed Francine’s nerves and Clive’s anger. After all, who else could love their brave, dedicated daughter as much as she deserved, except Mickey? They’d both traveled with the Doctor and been irrevocably changed by the experience. They’d both lived in alternate universes and understood each other like no one else could.

More than anything else, Jack told them what he’d witnessed firsthand: how deeply Mickey’s loyalty ran, especially once he gave his heart to someone. And everyone could see Mickey’s heart, cradled right there in the palm of Martha’s hand.

By the time Christmas pudding was gone, Francine smiled through her tears, and Clive embraced Mickey and called him “son.” And as soon as they were out of earshot, Jack suggested that Martha and Mickey honeymoon in the back-end of Bulgaria, not only because it was a beautiful and rugged spot, but also because there might just be a few Sontarans there who needed sorting.


	35. Pete's World Snapshots

As usual, escape is impossible. A throng surrounds the building outside, and everyone inside is keeping an eye on them. The confinement is getting to the Doctor. Even across the room, Rose sees it in the set of his shoulders and the increasingly annoyed crinkles beside his eyes. Plus, he’s been using his “my enormous Time Lord brain is tired of your idiotic nonsense” voice for the last half hour.

This is not going to end well. Not at all.

Rose makes a beeline to the Doctor, slipping her arm around his elbow. She bats her eyes at the fat man in the tuxedo, plastering on a grin. “Excuse me, but I need to borrow him.”

The fat man smiles back. “The cake, I expect? About time, too.” The Doctor rolls his eyes toward Rose, tapping his foot.

“Yes, right, cake!” Rose hauls the Doctor away.

He puts his arm around her waist, leaning down to murmur in her ear. “As delicious as those edible ball bearing decorations look, I don’t believe it’s cake time yet.” He taps his temple. “Impeccable Time Lord sense of chronology.”

“Are you implying my rescue wasn’t brilliant? Say it’s brilliant, or I’ll leave you at the mercy of another Vitex board member,” she retorts, pushing at him playfully.

“Of course you’re brilliant.” He hums contemplatively. “Jackie looks happy, doesn’t she?”

On the other side of the room, Jackie is resplendent in her purple mother-of-the-bride gown, Pete’s arm around her shoulder and a flock of well-wishers fawning over her. “Yes she does,” Rose says.

“And you? Are you happy, Rose Tyler?” He has the strangest, most serious expression on his face. Before Bad Wolf Bay, he seemed afraid to love her too much. Since he’s become part human, he seems afraid he can’t love her enough. Like he’s still got two hearts’ full of emotion, and only one to hold it in, and the overflow consumes him. It’s an intensity akin to the Oncoming Storm, but infinitely more tender. Her stomach flutters.

“Happy to bursting,” she whispers, as though it’s some secret between them, when surely everyone can see it plain as day.

“Brilliant!” The Doctor beams, threading his fingers with hers. “Run!”

He’s off like a rocket, tugging her along, and Rose is glad she refused Jackie’s attempts to get her into high heels for the wedding. She hikes her billowing white skirt to her knees, her trainers slapping the wooden floor as she dashes full-tilt with him to the ballroom exit.

There’s a hubbub behind them – their escape wasn’t exactly subtle – but they make it into the corridor unhindered and careen around a corner.

“The paparazzi have this place surrounded! We won’t make it to the limo without Pete’s bodyguards!” she calls to him.

“Don’t need the limo,” the Doctor retorts, sliding to a halt in front of a broom cupboard.

Rose glances down the hall, toward the growing din of the wedding guests on their trail. “If we’re just popping in there for a shag, it’d better be the quickest shag of your life, because we won’t be alone for long,” Rose says, arching her eyebrow at him.

“A quick shag. I like the sound of that,” he replies, clicking his teeth together gleefully. “I like the sound of a long, slow shag even better. We should get me out of this tux, anyway. Events tend toward the catastrophic when I’m wearing a tux.” Rose opens her mouth, but he lifts his index finger, cutting her off before she can speak. “The shag will most certainly be happening, as will the taking off of the tux. But right now, we’re here for your wedding gift.”

He flings open the cupboard door. Just inside, occupying the bulk of the space, is a blue police box.

Stunned, Rose reaches out to grab the Doctor’s arm, steadying herself. As he unlocks the TARDIS door, she stutters, “But – but – how did – she hasn’t grown big enough yet! She was a fire hydrant on our kitchen table this morning!”

“She was further along than I let on, thanks to some of my jiggery-pokery. I wanted her to be ready for our honeymoon.” In a quick movement, the Doctor lifts Rose off her feet, nudges the door open the rest of the way with his Chucks, and carries her across the threshold. “Do you mind if we skip the cake?”

 

~~~~~

 

This TARDIS control room is compact, because she’s young, but she’s still filled with a familiar yellow glow and the thrum of idling engines. The Doctor deposits Rose on her feet and dances to the console.

“Handbrake, easy does it,” he says, flipping a lever. He glances up at Rose. “Remember our first date?”

She wrinkles her nose. “End of the world? Earth gets roasted? Cassandra? That’s … not very romantic.”

“No no no no no,  _after_ Cassandra and Earth kabobs.”

“Chips!“ she says, her tongue poking between her teeth. He beams at her and flips a second lever. The beautiful, familiar keening of the TARDIS engines fills the small space. Rose bounces on her toes in excitement. “You’re taking me to get chips, in my wedding dress?”

“We missed the cake, and you need nourishment. Getting me out of this tux is going to be a long, involved process, and I want you to be at full strength.” He winks, and he’s so ridiculous and endearing that she can’t help herself. She grabs the metal railing, overcome with a gale of laughter.

Rose thought she’d experienced happiness – during her childhood with her mum and traveling with the Doctor before Canary Wharf – but in this moment she finally begins to understand how deep happiness can go. She hasn’t reached bottom, she’s still falling into it, warm and bright and perfect, and judging by the look on the Doctor’s face, he’s falling right alongside her.

With a shudder, the TARDIS engines grind to a halt. The Doctor leaps past her down the ramp, flinging the doors open with a flourish. “Rose Tyler, your chips await!”

He steps out, simultaneously turning to offer her a hand, and something goes terribly wrong. There’s a clamorous squeaking noise and the Doctor goes down, falling sideways and out of sight with a startled yelp.

Rose dashes forward, catching the TARDIS door frame with one hand to keep from tumbling out after him. She doesn’t know how well she can fight off an alien in her wedding dress, but she does know that Jackie will be mortified if she gets this ridiculously expensive designer frock dirty.

Well, if years of dealing with the Doctor haven’t taught Jackie how to cope with mortification, nothing will. Rose surveys the terrain, ready to leap to the Doctor’s defense.

Contrary to her expectations, they aren’t under alien attack. The Doctor’s sitting on a plush carpet, clutching his twisted ankle and staring around the room. It’s a perfectly ordinary sitting room, full of ordinary furniture and littered with ordinary children’s toys. A mangled pink bunny was the reason for the Doctor’s ungraceful exit.

The Doctor hobbles to his feet, muttering something about the TARDIS being too young to calibrate herself properly, when the sound of voices drifts in from the next room. He freezes. “Bollocks.”

Rose whispers, “This isn’t the chip shop, this is someone’s supper. C'mon, before this gets any worse.” She grabs his hand to haul him back inside the TARDIS, but they aren’t fast enough. A man and a woman appear in the door from the next room.

Rose’s mouth falls open. The woman is quite a few years older, her hair brown and pulled onto a low bun on the nape of her neck, but still clearly recognizable. Rose is looking at herself. The bloke with her is as tall and skinny as ever, but with small patches of gray at his temples.

“Bollocks,” the Doctor next to Rose whispers again. The older version of himself grins.

“Reapers coming?” Rose asks nervously.

“Nah.  _Wellllll_ , just so long as you stay over there and we stay over here,” the older Doctor says with a toothy grin, his eyes sparkling. He turns to the Rose standing next to him. “You’ve only grown more beautiful, you know.”

The other Rose nudges him with an elbow. “You’ve only gotten worse at piloting the TARDIS.”

“ _Oi!_ ” both Doctors protest in an indignant chorus, and the older Rose giggles.

The younger Doctor holds up his hands apologetically. “Sorry, sorry. I was aiming for the chip shop.”

“You’ll get there. But you should know the leisure palace on Woman Wept lost – well, they’re  _going_ to lose – our reservation,” the older Doctor tells him.

“Woman Wept? We’re going back to Woman Wept for our honeymoon?” younger Rose asks, head whipping around to the Doctor next to her.

“Ah, I hadn’t told her about that part of the surprise yet,” he says, shooting himself a dirty look.

“Don’t worry, there’s a nice bit of trouble to get into, even without the leisure palace,” older Rose says, nodding reassuringly. “Some political unrest involving a dictator and a sketchy pudding conglomerate. You’ll love it. And in spite of what she’s going to say, Mum does eventually forgive you for what happens to the wedding dress.”

Younger Rose is still standing on the threshold of the TARDIS, afraid to step onto the carpet outside, as if one touch might make this entire future unravel. 

The Doctors are staring intently at each other, and it occurs to Rose that they must be communicating telepathically. She looks her older self in the eyes. “The toys.”

“They  _were_  sleeping. At least until you landed, if I remember what comes next,” older Rose says, the corners of her mouth lifting. It’s as though she wants to beam, but she’s trying to contain herself so she won’t give too many secrets away, because the joy in her smile would reveal every detail of Rose’s future.

As if on cue, a child’s voice calls from the other room. “Daaaaaad? Was that the TARDIS? Are we leaving again? Gramma Jackie’s gonna be  _so mad_.” The boy sounds positively delighted at the prospect. Apparently he takes after his father. “Should I wake up Donna?”

“Were not going anywhere,” the older Doctor calls back. “Let your sister sleep.”

The younger Doctor turns to Rose. His face is a careful mask of composure, even as his eyes glitter with promises of things to come. “I’m hungry for those chips.”  

“Off you go now,” the other Doctor says, making a shooing motion. “And when you’re offered the choice on Woman Wept, it’s butterscotch. Not banana, and certainly not tapioca.”

“Butterscotch,” the younger Doctor repeats, giving himself a small, jovial salute. He steps into the TARDIS and puts his arm around Rose. “Chips first, then the pudding conglomerate. Allons-y!”


	36. Midnight - Donna & Ten

She’s asleep when the leisure palace attendant brings the phone. “Your pardon, Miss Donna Noble.”

Donna blinks, shading her eyes from the glare filtering through the thick protective glass above. With a groan, she snatches the phone from the alien’s orange hands. “Bugger off. I was having a dream about a man in a computer in a library. Isn’t nice to interrupt dreams about computer-library men, I’ll have you know.”

The alien’s two heads dip asynchronously. “Apologies, Miss Donna Noble.” It doesn’t so much walk away as it glides.

Donna puts the phone to her ear. “What is it now?” she sighs, not bothering to hide her annoyance. Because she’s certain the Doctor’s sightseeing tour has been delayed and he’s  going to try to talk her into getting on that Crusader transport again, when he knows perfectly well she has a third massage and second pedicure lined up before sundown.

The line crackles. When the voice comes through from the other end, it sounds hollow, but it has nothing to do with the quality of the connection. “Donna.”

She sits bolt upright in her lounge chair, nearly rocketing onto her feet. She’s heard him unhappy and dispirited before, but he’s never sounded anything like this. “Where are you? What do you need?” The urge to move — to find him, wherever he is, and help fix whatever’s wrong — is overwhelming.

“There was … something happened on the tour. But I’m back at the station now. I just … I just needed …”

“Stay there,” Donna says. Heedless of her robe and how much leg she’s showing, she clutches the phone against her ear and hustles toward the changing rooms. “I’m coming. I’m coming right now. Are you injured? Tell me what to bring! The TARDIS is right here, I could pop into the infirmary for some Time Lord band-aids or—”

“No, I’m not injured. Stay there. I’m coming back to you. I just … I needed to hear your voice.”

Donna stops mid-stride, holding the phone with two hands to keep it from shaking. “You’re alright, yeah?”

“No,” he replies. The admission is so blunt, so unexpected, that it puts Donna’s heart in her stomach. 

“I’m here, Doctor. I’ll be here. Always.”

There’s a shaky exhale on the other end of the line. “Donna. I’m … I’m glad you’re with me.”

“You couldn’t get rid of me if you tried, spaceman.” The affection in her teasing is unmistakable. She imagines he must be smiling a little; she hopes so, at least.

“I know better than to try something as foolish as that,” he replies. To her relief, there’s the barest hint of his usual self in the words.

“I’ll be here, waiting for you,” Donna says, and he hangs up the phone.


	37. Bad Wolf Bay, the first time around

Rose’s knees and fingertips are tingling. It could be the broken shock absorbers on Pete’s jeep or the horrible roads in this part of Norway, but Rose knows better. The feeling is the same she used to get just before the Doctor threw open the TARDIS doors onto an alien vista, and they dove headfirst into the closest available trouble.

Yep,  _definitely_  the same tingles. This means, to her very clear-headed thinking, that an adventure is about to begin.

She still hears his voice.  _Rose._  It’s a soft exhale in her ear, his limbs tangled with hers, his fingers cool against her scalp as he strokes her hair.  _Rose._  Like their last night before Canary Wharf, full of slow, shared breath and touching lips. Bodies curved together like a fortress, fending off the besieging lies of the beast in the pit.

_Rose._

He’s found a way through. He’s found a way to bring her home to the TARDIS — of course he has, because he’s the Doctor. It’s what he does, the impossible man in his impossible box.

Her mum has a deathgrip on her hand, which isn’t helping the tingles. Afraid to let go. Always afraid to let go. But Jackie hasn’t argued this time, not once. She’s got Pete and the baby, she’s got responsibilities in this universe, and Rose has responsibilities with the Doctor, and both women understand each other. Jackie will let go when the time comes.

Rose leans over to Mickey, sitting beside her in the backseat. Bouncing beside her, really, on this godforsaken road. “Sure you don’t want to come with, Mick? I know the Doctor won’t mind.”

He gives her a tight smile and shakes his head. “Nah. Can’t leave my Gran.”

From the front seat, Pete announces, “We’re here.”

It’s a cold, gray beach, full of chattering gulls and pounding surf. Empty. But his voice is still there, somehow, whispering across her mind like fingers stroking skin. Goosebumps prick her from scalp to toes and she closes her eyes. The roar of the ocean almost sounds like the thrumming pulse of the TARDIS.

She opens her eyes and grins at Jackie. “I don’t know why I bothered to pack my bag. Everything I need is already with him, anyway.” Her toothbrush drying in the cup beside his sink, her trainers gathering dust under his bed.

She leaves her suitcase in the car. There are goodbyes. Hugs and tears, promises to keep safe.

Rose walks to the middle of the empty beach, alone, and waits for him.

_Home._


	38. Applegrass

The Doctor is tinkering with something on the TARDIS console, and Rose takes a step closer. Trying to be subtle, she leans forward and inhales slowly.

“You getting a cold?” the Doctor asks, without turning around. Rose ditches any attempt at subtlety. Putting her nose practically on his shoulder, she sucks in a deep breath. Surprised, the Doctor leaps back, whirling around to face her, nearly tripping over the jumpseat.

“I can  _smell_ something!” she says, full of determined intensity, grabbing him by the lapels. “I  _know_ that smell. What  _is_ it?”

“Rose Tyler,” the Doctor begins chidingly, looking down at her as she buries her face in his chest and inhales deeply. He seems to forget whatever it was he meant to say. She crouches lower, moving down his chest to his stomach, sniffing the entire way. The Doctor’s eyes are virtually bulging out of their sockets.

“Applegrass!” she crows triumphantly, digging into his suit coat pocket and drawing out a fistful of wilting greenery. Straightening up, she brandishes it in his face. “What’ve you got a pocket-full of applegrass for, Doctor?”

He grins, looking very pleased with himself. “No particular reason. But would you mind digging through all my pockets, in case any more has stowed away?”


	39. End of Time

The window to Jackie’s apartment is dark. Relieved not to have to climb the stairs, the Doctor walks across the courtyard to wait. Staggers, really, although he doesn’t let himself think about that. Standing upright is difficult, so he props himself against the cold metal door, savoring the feel of snow on his face.

He’s never regenerated due to radiation poisoning before. Metebelis crystals, spectrox, bullets, his fellow Time Lords — nothing else has been quite this painful. The radiation is blighting him slowly, saturating to his marrow. Worst of all, it’s meshing with his natural regeneration energy. The combination feels like fingers of fire pushing at his cell walls, demanding release.

Containing his regeneration is more than just a struggle now, it’s a war, every atom a battlefield. He’s walking a dangerous line, suppressing the inferno without snuffing it out – if he keeps it up much longer, he’ll cross the line and abort his regeneration altogether.

He thought he had properly steeled himself for what was coming, but he was wrong. He hears her before he sees her, nattering with Jackie about New Year’s. He can’t even concentrate on the words, his body is shaking so badly. It’s  regeneration energy and radiation and his hearts, thundering erratically in his ears. It’s Rose Tyler, and how every pore of the man he is now was born out of love for her.

She rounds the corner alone, huddled in her pink hoodie, a cap hiding her blond hair. He can’t even see her face, but his hearts seem to stop altogether. His concentration falters and the energy inside his body flares painfully, nearly overcoming him then and there.

Regenerating in front of Rose Tyler before she’s even met him.  _Time paradox_ wouldn’t begin to describe the levels of bad that would be.

Using every scrap of his will, the Doctor clamps down on the regeneration energy and radiation, on the pain and his failing hearts.

“You alright, mate?”

He lifts his gaze from the ground to her face. Rose Tyler was the first thing he beheld with these eyes; it seems fitting she should be the last.


	40. The Christmas Invasion

The minute the Doctor walks into Jackie’s flat, he has a realization.

Smiling at Rose Tyler in this new regeneration is different. Before, when he was born in battle and so aching and raw, his smiles at Rose had been like intentionally peeling back a piece of armor, opening it to show her what was inside. Initially difficult, more comfortable over time, but never,  _ever_ effortless.

But now, in this new body, smiling at Rose Tyler is the most natural thing in the universe. It’s as much a part of his nature as his lungs filling with air and his twin hearts beating in syncopation. His eyes smile at her, even when his face doesn’t. And the movement of his cheeks, the curl of his lips, is simply a reflection of feelings so overwhelming, he couldn’t stem them if he tried.

Mind you, he hasn’t the slightest inclination to try that at all.


End file.
